I became a Christian in fifth grade at ten years of age. I had been attending a Christian school for a few weeks by that point, but I wasn’t exactly a practicing Christian. I was sitting in my “science” class as the teacher gave a lecture on the age of the universe, the Bible and its correlation with science, etc. Her misinformation eventually got to me. I became a Christian right then and there, believing fully in the many pseudoscientific claims that my teacher had made.
I am now very relieved to say that I am, in fact, an atheist – due in part to Prof. Myers. But we’ll get to that in a bit.
As a new believer in Christ, and a frequent internet user, I began to come across challenges to the veracity of the Christian faith online. It was inevitable that I would soon find some sort of weird Biblical explanation to this “dogma” that scientists were proclaiming. Indeed, one day I discovered the lectures of one Kent E. Hovind. My mind was easily indoctrinated by Hovind’s BS, and it remained that way for years.
During this time my religion troubled me very deeply. I didn’t want the rapture to occur – I wanted to stay here on Earth, to live, to grow. My search for truth was shrouded by religious presuppositions, which undoubtedly led to many sleepless nights as I wondered how certain facets of Christianity could be true in light of reality. I was being internally tortured by the ideas that had been planted in my head, and I lived in fear of the wrath of God.
Thankfully, everything changed. One day, I discovered a collection songs on Youtube – the Symphony of Science. Each song was composed of remixed snippets of audio and video from various shows, presentations, and talks relating to science. One of these songs was entitled “A Wave of Reason,” based on a talk given by Dr. Richard Dawkins. The musical piece was essentially about skepticism and reason.
My discovery of this song was the spark that led me to investigate further into science and the natural world. I watched the entirety of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos during this time. My search pressed on as I came across lectures and discussions by Dawkins, Sam Harris, Prof. Myers, and many others.
As I became more and more educated, I saw more and more flaws in religion. And eventually, thankfully, relievedly, I shed the childish concept of religion that had held me captive. I am a much happier individual because of it.
Thank you, Prof. Myers, for playing a vital role in my leaving religion. I cannot thank you enough.
Anonymous
I cheated a little bit on this one. Normally, I randomly pluck an email from a folder I’ve set up (which now contains about 600+ entries!), so the article is picked entirely by chance. Today, I first filtered the list to show only those that mentioned Sagan (about 50 entries), and picked randomly from that subset.
“held captive”?
Why do people who apparently embrace rational thinking use emotional tropes?
Anj: So you believe it is impossible for a rational person to be, or even feel “held captive”?
You seem to be mistaking rationalism for blunt denial of emotion or perhaps think we aspire to be Spock.
#2 Anj
“held captive”?
Why do people who apparently embrace rational thinking use emotional tropes?”
It is a difficult concept to ditch…and emotional response is a part of human nature and condition.
More so with religion stirred into the mix.
And religion does indeed hold the afflicted captive, maybe not with physical restraint but certainly mental ones, fear is the jailer and ignorance is the judge.
Religion operates by manipulating emotions. Atheist who were one religious recognize this, partly by the sense of liberation from constant guilt that comes with Christianity. (I have sinned…only say the word and I shall be healed).
Many atheist took their previous religious beliefs seriously, like I did, but unfounded beliefs melt away on close scrutiny. The relief that one feels when the world makes sense, finally, is not a trope. Christianity is like being in bondage to the men who claim to speak for a deity, but contradict themselves and each other. And the captivity is not always metaphorical.
Sometimes the jailor is the priest barring the church exit .
Cosmos on VHS from the library is what did it for me. :)
Curiously, the contents of many of these “Why I am an atheist” stories appear to directly contradict the accommodationist claim that the ‘in your face’ approach by PZ, Dawkins, Hitchens etc is counterproductive in attempts to reach the faithful. It would be interesting to know how many of the 600+ stories are by former believers who came to atheism as a result of exposure to PZ and the others.
God damn, do I hate Christian schools. It’s increasingly getting to the point where I wonder why they are even allowed. As if having a religious family and a Sunday school teacher spewing lies at you wasn’t good enough, these people need to make sure to taint a child’s regular education as well in order to keep them in thrall. Sickening.
I concur with Echidna @6. The road to thinking rationally about religion is a long one for some people, self included. The shedding the chains of a lifetime of self/socially imposed guilt is an amazing and beautiful feeling. We are not Spock.
Try thinking about it for ooooooh 3 seconds.
Strictly speaking it would be a bad idea to remove emotion from your internal life. It shouldn’t dominate because it is so fallible but I can’t see eschewing it as leading to any good.
I don’t wish to be rude to Anonymous, but when I read “I became a Christian in fifth grade”, I’m… skeptical. What were you before that?
What’s a Christian school? Is that a nice way of saying Catholic school?
I too was once a christian. As a teen I attended catechism class taught by my pastor. This was in 1969, with revolution in the air, and Pastor Mauney taught us about the various Jewish sects active in in Palestine/Judea in the 1st century. It sparked an interest in the “Historical Jesus”.
The Gospels present a Jesus wondering the countryside with NO mention of revolution and insurgency that stood at odds with what actually was occurring. Add to this mystery that Jesus was crucified, as was Spartacus because that was the punishment for INSURRECTION in the Roman Empire. Something seemed “left out”.
Robert Eisenman wrote “James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls”, which also noted this discrepancy in the gospels. Eisenman’s premise is that James, Jesus’ brother, was the heir to the “Kingdom of God” movement Jesus led. He ends the book with the idea that whatever James was, so to was Jesus. James was executed by the Sadducees, Rome’s Palestinian puppets, which led to the Jewish revolt in 66CE. Were the revolutionaries who took control of Jerusalem followers of James, the children of those who followed Jesus? If so, the survivors Titus marched to Rome a few years later after the fall of the Temple & the city of Jerusalem were the 1st “Christians” fed to the lions at the coliseum.
The Romans allowed for no hint of insurrection. The apostle Paul preaching that Jesus was Christ, seeking a kingdom in heaven, not earth apparently was acceptable, unlike James’ (-Jesus also?) notion of a “Kingdom” of the Ebionites (-“The Poor).
I read the bible many times. Interesting stuff, especially the description of the 1st “Christian Church” in Jerusalem described in Acts Ch.2:42-47 and again in Acts Ch.4:32-35. Ot was a Socialist Paradise, “…. All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.”.
Eventually, rationality won out. The god portrayed in the bible is no entity i’d want to worship, much less spend an eternity with.
Nemo: “I don’t wish to be rude to Anonymous, but when I read “I became a Christian in fifth grade”, I’m… skeptical. ”
My guess: Undecided. Or unclear on the concept. He might have been raised to be Christian, but that’s the point that things clicked, he felt he understood, and explicitly accepted it as true. Something along those lines. Around 4th or 5th grade is when I first started thinking about religious ideas and explicitly rejected them for the first time (but I suppose that is a different situation, because I hadn’t been exposed to religious ideas much before then).
Markle: “What’s a Christian school? Is that a nice way of saying Catholic school?”
It’s a private school that meshes Sunday School kind of teaching (including Bible study, daily religious songs, etc.) into regular teaching. Catholic schools are the most common kind, but you can also come across fundie non-Catholic Christian schools, where faithful parents ship off their children to get lied to. I know a bit about a Christian school in my area that makes their history lessons all about Bible events, and has science books that pull some ridiculous double-standards in order to talk about plate tectonics as obviously true, but deny continental drift because “were you there???”. I really hope that their science book doesn’t dip into biology *shudder*. Also, they have children memorize seemingly random Bible verses, verbatim, which is such a fucking waste of young brain power that it’s almost tragic.
Oh, stewardess? I speak evangelical.
Becoming a Christian is another phrase for being saved, or accepting Jesus into your heart, etc. For many Protestant denominations, that’s the magic moment where you don’t just know and understand and accept the truth of the Bible (specifcally the Gospel according to whatever denomination you’re in), you have emotionally and with your whole heart told God how much you love him and how yes, you do accept this gift of sacrifice and how you will be his servant from now on forever.
*if you’ve ever seen and wondered what was going on during an alter call, this is it. The emotions have been manipulated by the sermon and are running high and this is when people repent of everything and cry and say how much different their lives will be now that they really truly have Jesus. This can happen at any point in an evangelical’s life. (and, for some people who are into DRAMA and attention, seems to happen to them on a regular recurring basis, although after the first “saving” they are then repenting of backsliding) However, if this does not happen by grade 6 or so, the older they get, the more fervently their grandmothers and such pray for them, because even though they’ve been in church their whole lives they still aren’t technically saved and will still go to hell.
I hope that the haters in this thread will alert us when their brilliance is posted by PZ so we can pick out one sentence here and there to shit on. Anonymous’s post – and by the way Anonymous, kudos for all the fine hacking and DoS attacks! – hope the Mexican mafia doesn’t kill you – anyway this post absolutely has the ring of truth and is all too familiar. I hope your very brave and right decision has not cost you too much with believers you love – but if so that’s their loss.
Hell, bejeeberus, Carlie, are you a member of my family????
They keep praying for me yet, laying down plea after plea every day like chickens shitting in a pen, layer upon layer… Oh, the fumes after years of it! I get emails from an older bro with CAPS galore… GOD created the HEAVEN and the EARTH in 6 days! I thank GOD my REDEEMER and so forth and on…
Carlie, your note made me chuckly…thank-you for adding it here…oh, and I have not ‘attended’ to be churched for many years….makes no difference because they know what they know and they know I refuse and don’t know… I have told them, “I wasn’t chosen,’ (you know the drill, many are called but few are chosen…) but they just do not care. They do not care about me…. it’s so sad and chickenshit.
WTF?!
How in the name of all that is sane and wholesome is a teacher, even one in a Christian school, allowed so seriously to misrepresent scientific fact and still keep their job?
I mean, surely teachers have to teach what the examination actually tests? And the examination is going to test the scientific facts, which are at odds with what this “teacher” is teaching.
… I randomly pluck an email …
So this series does not come from careful late-night screening by an experienced grader at the higher-education level?
Pretty good average quality so far – the actively-selected material ending up in the book is gonna be really impressive…
Symphony of Science? Really??
Wow, an abomination of autotune did some good in the world. Truly anything can be used for good or evil!
Symphony of Science did it? We have a n00b here. ;) Welcome.
A kid, I’m guessing.
Most likely because religion uses emotional tropes, and indeed, uses emotion to maintain its power over the individual.
It certainly wasn’t evidence keeping this person “within the fold.”
Glen Davidson
My kid loves symphony of science, the quantum world one. So cute to hear her little voice saying “that’s Brian Cox, he’s a physicist”.
I can absolutely understand how The Symphony of Science would convince someone that there is no God.
IIRC, “becoming a xian” or being “saved” is the same thing as being BORN AGAIN. It’s mostly a fundie thing, not Protestant.
That is why fundies used to be called born again xians. These days, they still are but not as often as “morons” or “death cultists”.
My natal churches didn’t do that. They had roots in Calvinism. I guess we all just knew we were saved before we were born and predestined for salvation so it was no big deal.
THANKS for the Symphony of Science — it made me forgive AutoTune® for existing.
I’m willing to wager that Anon was very moved by that Symphony of Science piece. Do you have to make him/her wrong to show how hip you are? Is that really necessary to shit on someone’s personal experience so you can have a shot at, what? A Molly or just being accepted by the cool kids? This is a person you are mocking, they are on our side. Put down the snarkthrower for ten goddam minutes.
Autotune is a tool. I agree that it is usually used to create abominations, yes. But Symphony of Science (and to a slightly lesser extent, the others) is a work of art using that tool.
@Pareidolius
Oh come on, he’ll survive a little bit of sarcasm. But you are right, sorry, I apologize for making fun of something that has played an important role in Anon’s live, there’s no arguing about taste. The important thing was the message therein anyways, and I find it absolutely wonderful that these things actually reach people in profound ways (No sarcasm).
Christian schools are private schools. The people who could fire this teacher most likely agree with him and developed the curriculum and the exams.
“held captive”?
Even though I ditched religion as I entered my teens I was still “held captive” by the fear that denying the existence of the invisible sky fairy might result in eternal hell and damnation if I was wrong, so for years I ‘believed’ in what is probably “the philosopher god” of the Enlightenment, a creator who put all the rules in place and then quit.
It took many more years to finally figure out that the god I thought existed was just as easily replaced by “the universe”, or by “mere chance”, and all the same results applied. Finally figuring out that Jesus couldn’t possibly have been the son of a fictional ANE tribal deity put the story to rest even more recently, and made me realised what utter BS all the J-C religions are.
Thanks, Anonymous. (why didn’t I grab that ‘nym?)
As for Autotune: I generally can’t stand autotuned stuff, but I’ll still listen to Symphony of Science when it’s on.
And there are no qualifying exams at the state level which students must pass to get a high-school diploma, and therefore the christian school grants diplomas to whoever has paid the tuition; or else the state exam is only on English and math, which the christian students can legitimately pass; or else the state exam is fairly comprehensive and the christian school has cram sessions in 11th/12th grade to warn their students what kind of “evolutionist lies’ they have to answer to pass. Depends on the state and the school.
Some public state universities won’t give credit to students coming out of those backward christian schools, because it can be shown they don’t really have a high-school education. But some give credit anyways, and why not, half the kids graduating from ordinary public schools don’t have any real education, either.
Oops, sorry about the quote mush. Those were actually AJS’s question and truthspeaker’s reply, which I should have separated. Sorry.
It’s a little bittersweet to see an entry by an “Anonymous” in 2011. But we ARE fighting against thousands of years of persecution here, so the Atheist taboo is not going to dissolve overnight. Here’s hoping that this person can attach their name to this someday…
Perhaps I should say that I see a kind of
“Come to Jesus!” pattern to atheism coming out stories.
Emotion, especially strong emotions are sooooooo often used in religion that when they are used in science based discussions, it’s seems very familiar….atheist tent revivals complete with ideological declarations.
For me – it’s “religion doesn’t work”. I don’t need to “embrace” atheism, because it’s like embracing nothing. There’s nothing there.
I have an autism spectrum child. Autistics often engage in self comforting behaviors that look very odd to someone else but serve to help them become calm and focused. Many people use religion the same way. Does the world seem too chaotic? It’s all part of a Plan. Does the world seem unjust? Justice will be served in the after life.
Those tropes don’t work for me. They work well for others, which is why I don’t mind if someone repeats those familiar phrases: “They are in a better place now.”. These are people who are uncomfortable and are seeking comfort.
I don’t begrudge my child his stimming because it serves a purpose. He’d probably be incredibly stressed if I forced him to stop. People have religion because it serves a purpose for them. It’s literally logical.
So…when I feel the urge to smack down some tired cliche like “God never gives us burdens that we can’t bear.” with “Oh? What about suicide?”, I remember that people need that security and comfort and it’s cruel to be needlessly nasty. I just think “Oh – they are stimming.” and ignore it.
@39
So true. The emotional appeal plays a tremendous role in the whole pattern of “Embrace God/Embrace Jesus” panhandle.
And it really helps when the religoid can back up the appeal with a bit of ‘hard’ anecdotal evidence to hit the putative doubter with:
http://whatiamtobe.blogspot.com/2009/02/god-vs-science.html
(My apologies for not being able to get this to link).
This hoary old chestnut has been in circulation for quite some time, but it’s been resuscitated yet again in recent years–“If a great mind like Einstein can accept God then how could you, with your comparatively minor intellect, continue to pretend to disbelief?”
I just had this brought to my attention today, but I’d heard it before.
Amazing. The Glurge for Jeebus never dies out, never becomes less popular, apparently. And the Bible pushers definitely understand this very well.
Actually I guess the link does work. That’s what I get for being a doubter, I suppose.
O. Nose @ # 39: If a great mind like Einstein can accept God…
The same Einstein who said,
and
and
and
?
> …you do accept this gift of sacrifice and how you will be his servant from now on forever.<
-It is so odd that so many people have no issue with being a _servant_ to anyone (much less the idea that god would need/want servants). I know I have no desire to be one of those "servants of god". Heck, it's not like they get paid for it.
>If a great mind like Einstein can accept God then how could you, with your comparatively minor intellect, continue to pretend to disbelief?<
-seems like a simple response would be "just because an individual has a great mind doesn't mean that everything they believe in is right"
Anj
You probably should begrudge/smack down these cliches on occasion anyway. “They are in a better place” and other such exaltation of a life after death serves to demean our earthly lives. It takes the sting out of death by taking the spice out of life. And does so with a lie. Granted, it’s not too offensive in and of itself. It’s when it is coupled with talking about how dirty and sinful the real world is and pining for the glory of Heaven/meeting God that we start to get a taste of the problem.
Also, “God never gives us burdens that we can’t bear” is just so ridiculously, obviously false and reeks of just world bias. Imagine someone in a position where their burdens are very much close to more than they can bear, or to the point where they have had to go to extraordinary ends to remove burdens in order to continue living. Imagine people who know loved ones who have died tragic, premature deaths due to physiological “burdens”. The trite old “comforting” saying isn’t so pleasant when it can be used to deny the legitimate struggles and tragedies that others experience.
By no means am I saying that you aren’t justified to take a breath and let the cliches go unchallenged. I hold my tongue a lot as well. I am saying, for general, instructional purposes, to all that might pay attention, that the religious tropes and canards that people use to comfort themselves often have a few horrible logical implications if actually believed in. And this is important to have in the back of one’s head, lest one get the impression that religious ideology is harmless until it is actively telling people to kill each other. I’m sure these people could come up with ways to comfort/delude themselves without accidentally dismissing the relevance of our physical existence or the life stories of good people that didn’t get a happy ending. But that would be too much hard work, when accepting the stock reassurances of the faith is just so much easier.
@ Pierce Butler and Sunnydale:
Precisely my point.
I wasn’t arguing in defense of the above quoted hoary old chestnut. I was using it as an example of the type of glurge fundamentalists (actually Xtian religionists of many different stripe) like to fling at the unbelievers or doubters.
The reductio ad absurdum crux of their argument invariably being along the lines of: “If a great scientific mind like Einstein’s can ‘humble itself’ sufficiently to admit the existence of a Supreme Creator, then how can YOU, of comparatively much lesser intellect possibly be so bold as to deny its existence?”
This stuff is often remarkably effective with the young, the unschooled, and the highly impressionable. It’s also false–Einstein was certainly NOT a believer, as your above quotes amply demonstrate, Pierce–but patent falsity has never been a bar to the Xtian tactic of presenting poorly founded rumour as fact, if that poorly founded rumour can be twisted to support their central thesis. It works quite often enough for them to continue using it as a reliable tool to make converts and prop up the faith of those in their midst whom they suspect of falling into doubt about “The Truth”.
This is one reason why, year in and year out, this kind of demonstrably false junk keeps turning up over and over again; facilitated even more so nowadays by the power of the Internet.
Apologies if my argument AGAINST the use of Einstein’s supposed ‘beliefs’ by the Xtian fundies was misunderstood.
I don’t get it. What about “held captive”?
Is being rational and ascending into Magical Superpower Land where you are untouchable and invulnerable the same thing now?
O. Nose @ # 46 – Yr points are quite valid, and I doubt anyone here thought that Einstein said what the evangelizers claim he did.
I was just taking advantage of the opportunity you offered to roll out a few of my favorite AE quotes.
@#48-Pierce:
Great quotes, BTW.
Keep them coming. We can never have too much firepower to throw back at the fundy distorters of fact.
Interesting; I hadn’t thought about that. So I guess that means that, as long as the overall average rate of submissions stays at or above one per day, there could be a number of entries submitted on the very first day that might never get posted.
On the other hand, if the current submission level stayed at or above one/day, there would necessarily be a continually growing number of submissions that will never get posted. Though in that case PZ might be motivated to either post submissions more frequently, or cut off submissions at some point.
O. Nose @ # 49: Great quotes, BTW.
I found ’em here – a pity the FtB boat still rocks so erratically that our esteemed host cannot yet transfer his “Random Quote” sidebar candy to this vessel…
Sad post. Fascinating comments. Almost everyone posting comments has a scewed view of Christianity, of Christian schools and of the facts of how true Christianity should look – but don’t get defensive, its the fault of those who who use the name Christian and who in their ignorance and immaturity misrepresent Christianity, and thus make Christianity, as it truely is, appear unscientific and unreasonable and disjointed. The problem with Atheism is it offers NO ANSWERS, it offers only an escape from religion. The problem with Christianity is Christians! (myself being one of them, and a terrible exame myself) To discover the Truth within Christianity (and it IS there, I must beg you to overlook the Christians and and the Catholic Church (which is an offshoot) and study the data, and if you can find objectivity, you will find the Answers. But Narrow is the Road, and few find it. Jesus said it would be that way. Science and history and our very nature and even the content of this thread supports the claims of Scripture for those who have eyes to see it. The rest see what they want to see because at the end of the day, they don’t want accountability, and that ultimately is always what this debate bolis down to. Who is in charge of your life? You or God? Are you accountable or not? Athelism is the Ultimate Free Pass to live however you want. Christianity says you must give an account. That is what all the fighting is really about. Believe, I’d rather be an atheist if the evidence really pointed there, but it simply doesn’t doesn’t. Atheism requires far more faith at the end of the day.
Karl B.,
A fine piece of satire. You’ve managed to pack in quite a number of the most ridiculous pieces of nonsense Christians puke up over this blog on a regular basis.
“No true Scotsman” – check!
Use of all-capitals as if that made a claim more convincing – check!
Random capitalisation of the first letter of words – check!
Claim that the evidence supports Christianity without actually providing any such evidence – check!
Claim that Jesus predicted that we would reject him, even though it’s quite clear from the gospels that he expected the imminent end of the world – check!
Claim that atheists are “unacccountable”, even though we very obviously are (to our families, friends, colleagues, the law, and our own consciences) – check!
Claim that atheism requires more faith than religion – check!
Well done sir!
You seem to have atheists confused with libertarians.
“The problem with Atheism is it offers NO ANSWERS”
@#52-Karl B.
That one sentence really is the nub of it for the Christian mind (indeed, the Western mind in general), as far as I’m concerned.
Why must there be ‘answers’? Answers to what exactly? Who made it all? Who our ‘daddy’ really is? What would you find so utterly dismaying–nay, terrifying– in the idea if there were, indeed, no ‘answers’ to everything to be found in our span of time on this world? Could you not simply accept the idea that the concept of ‘answers’ is something uniquely applicable to human conciousness, and may not in the greater scheme of things have any real meaning at all?
And even if you couldn’t accept that idea, Karl (and admittedly, many cannot)–science at the very least quests unceasingly to find ‘answers’. The answers often do change as the available evidence must perforce change, as more new data is constantly brought to light. Christianity, OTH, simply runs in an unceasing, self-contained, self-referential circuit, merely reinterpreting the same mouldering texts over and over again in a continual attempt to make those texts somehow relevant to each new generation.
How, exactly, would you interperet that as seeking ‘answers’?
for the above statement not to be a lie, at least one of the following has to be true:
– you don’t know the meaning of the word “evidence”
– you’ve only ever looked for “evidence” on christian websites
– you don’t know that it is necessary to look for evidence that contradicts ones claims, not just for evidence that might support it, if oneactually wants to know where the evidence points to
if any of the above is true, then I feel sad that you’ve received such sub-par training in critical thinking; if none of the above is true, you’re simply a liar.
which is still better than Christianity, since Christianity offers empirically wrong answers.
That kind of empty blather might impress at the church potluck, but here, you will have to explain what the questions are, what answers Christianity supposedly has to offer them, and how you know these answers to be correct.
Among other things.
Actually, it’s Christians all the way down. That’s the problem. Awfully presumptuous of you to call it “data” too, when I guarantee you that it has not been collected with any kind of scientific rigor.
A fancy way of saying that one can see anything that one wants to see.
What does it matter? And why is it necessarily good for some god to be in charge of my life?
First of all, take the boxing gloves off before you type. Second of all, as has been said before, we’re accountable to all sorts of people and social structures. Frankly, if you need the threat of some supernatural spook to keep you in line, then you’re a very immature and possibly sociopathic individual.
Oh, it’s about plenty else. How about the fighting between different religions and sects (like the splinter sect that I’m guessing you’re an adherent of and that somehow has all the right answers that the other 40,000 don’t)?
How does it take more faith to NOT believe in an entity for which there is no evidence?
Enjoy the dialogue, and the spirit of it, some sites get obnoxious and rude, and I have not sensed that here, so I will respond. I too, have tried to be respectful, even as I disagree. So I’ll attempt some responses, though futile as they may be.
1) Atheist vs. Libertarians; and my statement that Atheism offers the “Ultimate Free Pass” to do whatever you want, I did not mean to imply that Atheists are not good citizens nor abide by the laws, I have many good friends who are atheists and we debate quites spiritedly, and they are good people, and respect the laws, albeit for different reasons than I, noble nonetheless; I was referring to a free pass from responsibility from moral law from a Creator or the ability to rationalize what they THEY believe to be right or wrong when they disagree with the Law or even when their conscience says otherwise. Without a belief in God (or god) an aheist becomes their own final authority on what is right or wrong when they are forced with a decision, there is no absolute outside of themself – that is the ultimate free pass. I, on the other hand, do not have that luxury. I must submit to a moral code even when I want to go against it, because I believe there is an Authority higher than me.
2) I don’t believe there HAS to be answers, but where there ARE answers, I would prefer to have answers over no answers. IF I was created as an eternal being, and IF my body is only a shell to hold a spirit (we do refer to our body as “my” body, as though we “own” it, IF i am more than a body, and IF there is a soul, and IF when the body can no longer sustain life, and IF there is some kind of life after death, SHOULDN’T we WANT to know what it is? That would be only responsible. Just as atheist claim there is no evidence that there IS, there is no evidence that there IS NOT! As the saying goes, if I am WRONG, there is no loss – other than perhaps some great immorality and sexual fun here perhaps (and the pain it usually results in) here in this life, BUT if atheists are wrong, they stand to lose much more. The HIGHER RISK is to chose that when you die there is NOTHING afterward. When I die, if I have been wrong, I lose nothing. If an atheist dies, and is wrong, she/he will stand before a Creator and give account for their life, and stands to lose a lot.
3) Jadehawk calls me a “liar” for saying “Believe, I’d rather be an atheist if the evidence really pointed there, but it simply doesn’t doesn’t.”
First of all, let’s be nice. A lie is an intentional mistatement. I never ever accuse atheists of lying. I believe they are wrong. But being wrong is not lying. I may be proved wrong one day when I die and __________________ (was going to say discover there is no God, but I wouldn’t “discover” I would just ___________ (flat line and cease to exist, attempting some light-hearted humor here for my atheist friends)
Secondly, when one talks about “evidence” in this discussion, it is truly difficult, because one’s presuppositions play so large a role.. Jadehawk attacks my opiniion, “The problem with Atheism is it offers NO ANSWERS” with his own opinion, “which is still better than Christianity, since Christianity offers empirically wrong answers.” Both are statements of opinion, unfortunately.
Evidence… Data… The crazy thing is, both sides use the same data and evidence, we just attribute it to two different things, atheists to “Random Chance” or “Mystery” – and Christians to God. Both require Faith. That’s all I meant by atheism requiring more faith than Christianity, perhaps that is unfair, perhaps the faith is equal. But both require faith, and in the end, atheism is a religion just the same, it has its creed, its leaders, it doctrine, its websites, books, teachers, and zealots just the same. Its folks who make it look bad – and those who represent it well, just like Christians do. But it doesn’t answer the basic questions of who we are, how did we get here, and what is our purpose, in fact, it has less satisfying answers, as people are then just animals, with no real purpose, no real value, and no hope that things are moving forward according to a master plan, things really could all go very badly… the answers atheism offers are pretty depressing. (not that the impact of Christianity doesn’t have some depressing chapters too, in all fairness!)
But at the end of the day, Christianity, when looked at from a historical, archeological, and human nature stand-point – prophesies fulfilled and simply the incredible design of nature, it all points to the accuracy of the Bible and the existance of the creator…
However, in the end KG nailed me best, “check” there is little use discussing this, as most are not open to discussion, you’ve got your answers what Christians share, but the hard thing is, you aren’t really hearing – you just think you are. But you don’t want to hear. Because you don’t want there to be a God. I just wish you could understand that the God you don’t want, I don’t want either, and the God you think Christian’s believe in, doesn’t exist, it is a straw-man God that has been built up so He is easier to reject. It’s frustrating, because you have to experience God before you can understand and see how it all fits together and makes sense. But that’s how God wants it, he wants people to come by faith. No one is ever argued into faith. All we can do it TRY to show that there is some reasonablness to the Christian Faith, but the counter-arguments are always there to push back. But we try, ought of love.
Lastly, just let me apologize for those who do it obnoxiously, I hope I have done so respectfully and with some sense of level-headedness, even though I know I’ve won no points for my side overall.
Good day. Sorry for the long post.
you’re arguing this backwards. First you need to show that a creator exists, and then you need to show that “moral law from a Creator” is in fact moral; only then can you talk about “rationalization” and getting free passes. Because all the evidence I’ve ever seen is that Christians exempt themselves from laws all the time, too, and there have even been studies showing that when people think about what god wants, they use the part of the brain that tells them what they themselves want, not the part that tells them what other people want. IOW, believers create the “moral law from a Creator” in the image of whatever they already believe.
this is not fully true, since atheists are part of the so-called social contract; but to the degree that this is true for atheists, it is also true for Christians, since there is no god.
again, no. god doesn’t exist, so he’s not an authority on anything. any “authority” you may be feeling you need to obey is either imaginary or entirely human.
I note that you don’t seem to care much whether the answers you’re getting are the correct ones, as long as they’re answers.
that’s a linguistic artifact, not an argument for anything; it’s also “my soul” and “my mind”
of course; but again, only if the answers are actually true, and there’s so far only one method of inquiry that is capable of telling right answers from wrong ones; and that one has so far not found a shred of evidence to suggest that gods, souls, or afterlives exist, or even that means by which such things could exist exist.
Occam’s Razor.
that’s not a saying, that’s Pascal’s Wager, and it’s been an invalid argument for several hundred years. For starters, it presents as a binary something that has an almost unlimited number of possible answers. Ultimately, being Christian is not a “sure bet” because there’s thousands upon thousands of possible gods and possible interpretations of how to worship them correctly. There is in fact no way to guarantee that you’ve placed your bet on the correct religion, and you’re just as likely to not be rewarded for your religiousness as an atheist is.
I did no such thing. Please be more careful in your reading.
incorrect. Christianity makes empirically unsupportable statements, and in many cases downright counterfactual ones. It is not an opinion but a fact that Christianity provides incorrect answers to many questions; depending on the flavor of Christianity, there can be more of those false answers, or fewer of them, but few flavors manage to avoid blatantly counterfactual claims altogether.
that’s not how evidence works. you do not “attribute” it to anything: you hypothesize about it, test it, see if your hypothesis is even necessary to explain it, and if it isn’t, you discard it. Everything else is not working with the evidence, it’s wishful thinking.
no.
no. what exactly is it that i need to have faith in to simply accept what the evidence shows, and reject what the evidence doesn’t support or doesn’t need?
nope, no creed and doctrine. as for “leaders”, all except the most anarchic groups have them, they are not a hallmark of religion; neither is any of the stuff you listed after this.
again, neither does Christianity, since it provides answers that are either completely false or simply lack any evidence for being true. But I note again that you don’t care for the accuracy or truthfulness of the answers, as long as they exist.
people ARE animals; that’s one of those counterfactuals religion provides. also, purpose and value are man-made. I have plenty of both, and didn’t need a creator for either. And the idea of a “master plan” is abhorrent to me; who wants a life that’s all mapped out from birth?
Christianity, and specifically the bible, contradicts history, archeology, and biology constantly. Also, linguistics, astronomy, chemistry, neuroscience, physics, etc.
depending on what you mean, you’re either suffering from pareidolia and confirmation bias, or are confusing texts written about a contemporary period but made to look as if they were written in the past for actual predictions that came true (amusingly, those passages get the “future” right, but the “present” wrong; that’s how we know when they were actually written, claims by the authors notwithstanding)
begging the question; also, incredibly stupid design. Who designs a birth canal that goes through the hip-bones of an upright-walking being?! Marsupial pouches would have been so much better. And that’s just one example of extremely shoddy design.
see, now you’re absolutely making stuff up. it is in no way true that atheists don’t “want” there to be a god.
Also, most atheists have been Christians, and they didn’t stop because they wanted there to not be a God, but because they heard, they listened, and they found it all lacking in any connection to reality.
again: many atheists have been Christians; even the kind that “experienced” god; and then they got over it. You’re making things up again. And also, you’re making yourself look pretty silly by claiming that you have to believe first, and then it will make sense. Reality and evidence don’t work that way.
nope; the people who benefit from being able to claim the authority of a god behind them want people to take their word for it uncritically. God does not exist, there’s no evidence for any such thing existing, and a lot of evidence actually contradicts a lot of claims about such a being.
oh sure, people always try; and then it all falls apart and goes back to the “you just have to believe it’s true”, showing its complete unreasonableness.
The old bullshit you can’t be moral without an imaginary friend. Think about evolution. Homo sapiens have existed for 200,000 years. In that time, they have worked at making their groups work, which is nothing but moral decisions, like share, don’t kill, help the sick, etc. What happened with the babble is that the morals of a group of Canaanites was written down 2,500 years ago. Suddenly they have new power because they are attached to johnny-come-lately imaginary deity? I don’t think so Tim.
Bullshit. Unless you want to double down on the ‘No True Scotsman’ fallacy and claim that all the Christians who believe that only Christians are true Americans, and that the United States is a Christian nation, then you are moving goalposts. Which is it? Doubling down on the fallacy, or moving the goalposts?
But would you let your daughter marry one?
Do you listen to what they say? or just look for a rhetorical chance to zing them?
Nice of you to recognize them as people. But you still think they will burn in hell for all eternity because they have failed to kiss the ass of the great skydaddy, right?
But don’t you view god(s)’ law as a higher law? What if a law passed in your country conflicted with ‘god(s)” law? Which takes precedence? The law of society and the social contract? or the law from the bible which commands that you kill those wearing clothing of mixed thread?
So your moral law wants me to kill homosexuals, anathematize those with tatoos or earrings, sell my daughter into slavery, stone those working on whatever you claim is the sabbath, and on and on? Should I call down bears to kill children who mock me? There is no morality in your bible. The secular law of the land, however, changes as humanity grows more aware of itself — slavery, infanticide, killing homosexuals and others who break the tribal mores are no longer acceptable in today’s criminal or civil law, yet you claim that the bible speaks from a moral position?
And this is what theists do. Killing is wrong, but it is okay to kill a doctor because you think god(s) disapproves of a particular legal medical procedure. Raping children is wrong, but abusers have been known to quote chapter and verse to their victims to show that this is what god(s) wants. Living in today’s world, as a Christian, following the rules of the bible, requires constant and total rationalization of every single act.
Again, bullshit. Atheists are part of society. Society has its own rules and laws, both written and unwritten. If I transgress on those rules, I may suffer anything from a mild rebuke to the death penalty (here in the US). Atheists are not the ones claiming that they can commit murder because god(s) tells them to and, despite any punishment here on earth, will get the ultimate reward and spend eternity waving palm fronds and singing Hoseah again and again and again and again. The only part of me that will last past my death (other than the chemical components of my body) are my writings, and the memories others have of me. When I am dead, I am done. Gone. Deceased. The opprobrium of society is what matters, not the promise of an everlasting reward or punishment in a fantasy afterlife.
Right. You can go kill a homosexual and, while you might be punished on earth, your psychopathic skydaddy will still reward you.
And the ‘moral’ code of the bible, if you actually lived it, would get you labelled as a homicidal psychopath who dabbles in slavery and genocide, and embraces primitive tribalism and demonization of the ‘other’ so thoroughly and completely that killing all the men and post-pubescent women, and enslaving and raping the children is perfectly acceptable.
Dear Father Ogvorbis,
“ass of the great skydaddy” should excuse me from replying, I don’t remember insulting you, unless my existance insults you, I think I’ve tried to be fair, and even apologize for the Christians on my side who embarrass my side, you have more straw men than I know what to do with, its hard to know where to start, or if I should honor you with a reply, since you you are shooting below the belt, I think this will be my last reply on this thread, since my athest friends are far more respectful than that, and no, I don’t “zing” them at all, we enjoy intellectual conversation often, online and in person, and agree to disagree at the end, and enjoy what we have in common – which is much, movies, science (there is not much difference there, other than what ’caused’ this big marvelous marble) and of course politics is fun to debate too!) You seem to lack an ability to have a good spirited conversation without making it personal. I’ve not made it personal, I could actually enjoy a conversation at starbucks with an atheist, talk, discuss, and disagree at the end, no hard feelings. I am not judgemental. I hold my beliefs with the understanding that i could be wrong in the end, and will find out one day, but owe it to myself to be intellectually honest and choose that which best resolves all the information available.
A few misconceptions about what Christians believe, I hope to correct so you don’t hold it against us, I’m not moving goal posts. “A Christian Nation” only means that we were founded to have our laws based on the Bible, NOT that everyone here be a Christian, you really should look into that history and the actually writings of our founders, not all were Christians, and even those who weren’t understood that the Christian Faith and the Bible had the best foundation for law and freedom to believe anything, many were simply diets. While there were few atheists, there were some. The Christian Nation means that it was the primary faith, the faith upon which the law was based, but it was never imposed, and in fact, protected the existence of any other faith, something that had never been done up to that time to the extent our framers did, it was truly revolutionary. Separation of Church and State however, is now being rewritten to mean more thann it originally did, but thats another post for another thread. ;)
If I had a daughter, of course, a father hopes a daughter believes the same, you bait me, but in honesty, I am a father,the Bible says that married people should be “equally yoked” – that means a healthy married is always best if people believe the same. If my daughter were a Christian, she should marry a Christian for unity in the marriage. BUT if my daughter were an atheist, she should marry an atheist. I would let my daughter marry whom she falls in love with. You are again forcing a view of Christians on yourself as some kind of controlling freaks, which they are not. I would allow her to make her own decision.
RE: killing those with clothes of mixed thread, you are pulling verses out of context, which is common for those who do not understand the Bible. I won’t even bother to try and explain that here and now, you’d have to be open to explanation, but to say, there are explanations for those odd and admittedly weird verses for those open to learning.
RE: killing homosexuals, etc. Again, you are forcing things upon me that I don’t believe, unfairly either by taking verses out of context or by not understanding the Bible. Which is understandable and unfortunate. Just know, if you would, God doesn’t want homosexuals killed, or children sacrificed, etc. Nor do I, nor do Christians (except those wackos that neither of us like!) To use those arguments against Christianity, is a straw man, and to avoid an honest and sincere pursuit of the truth.
re: “Atheists are part of society.” you are putting words in my mouth I never said – you are builing me up to be far harsher than I am, I have said nothing nothing harsh about atheists… when I refer to not having a moral code outside of themselves, I am referring to after society’s rules… sorry it is hard to explain, those things that God says are wrong, that we (including myself) can justify, pre-martical sex, cheating on our spouse, stealing, things we can justify in the moment, things that may not be illegal, but we know in our heart are wrong, but we decide they are right for whatever reason WE decide they are right…
C.S. Lewis described it better than I can in his book, “Mere Christianity” a little classic book, I’d recommend if you had a 1% of genuine sincerity of giving an honest look at Christianity – if you wanted to read something that has helped many atheists give an honest look at God – read that little book. You can still reject God and Christianity, but at least you can have done so after reading a little book written by the best friend of the creator of the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, instead of some shmuck on a blog you have no respect for.
I dare you to read it. Come on, you are an intellect, he was an intellect who was a friend of atheists too, who formed a group called the Inklings who met in a pub regularly to argue about such things with Tolkein and others.
And chill’ out a little. No need to mention God’s Ass. I wouldn’t want to stand before Him someday after saying that, he just might kick your ass for saying that. ;)
(that was a joke, don’t get all rilled up on me) LOL
Life’s too short. We ought to be able to discuss this stuff like gentlemen, IF we are really honestly on a pursuit of the Truth, aren’t we?
Funny how Xianity isn’t mentioned in the constitution. Saying we are an xian nation is a lie. We are a secular nation, with a lot of delusional fools like yourself, who self identify as xian.
No, we’re getting back to what Jefferson thought. Religion should be in churches, not in public life.
The hateful verses are there in black and white, and cannot be explained away. What you need is a mechanism to revise the babble as new information becomes available. Oops, that sounds like science, not religion where lot so folks believe something written 2500 years ago to be inerrant.
The biggest cause of atheism is actually reading the babble from cover to cover. It was with me, and about 60% of the atheists in this country. Why you think reading that book of mythology/fiction would do anything else than chase folks away is a mystery.
Jadehawk,
While we obviously disagree, and will never see eye to eye, and are at an in-pass, thank you for your thoughtful responses, the time you took to counter me point by point, and for avoiding insults and profanity, you are obviously educated, intelligent and engaged in this topic (I present YOU as proof there IS a God! ha) – I would welcome you as a friend. I would hope that you feel the same way. I for one, do not think that people have to agree on all things in order to get along and have appreciated your tone during this conversation. I have several atheist friends on facebook and in person, and can see that you and I could truly enjoy talking. You’ve been pointed and direct, which is fine, yet never insulting, as I have tried to be. I see no point in our bantering further. I respect your position and I see the wall between us as impossible to break down, for there perspectives I can “prove” – and yet when I look at this world, and the wonder that it is, I can not accept that it just “is” – there must be a wonderful God who fashioned it all! Every DVD or special I watch on the incredibleness (spell check says that’s not a word! ha) of this world, tells me moreso that there must be a Designer. At the same time, I cringe at the way Christians have represented Him over the years, and hate defending Christianity, I’m much more comfortable defending God. I wish Christians hadn’t pushed so many people away from Him.
I wish more atheists could dialogue about God without it getting so tense and angry… I’d love to be in a room filled with atheists one day and get to bottom of that anger. I feel like Christians owe some huge apology to the lot of them for when Christians get obnoxious, I get frustrated when I read Christians spouting Bible verses and “God said it, I believe it, that settles it” rubbish on blogs. I am so convinced that both Christianity is right but that Christians have so damaged the message that there is a disconnect between the truth and those who carry it. But that’s a topic for another day.
Good day to you.
Greetings Mr. Redhead,
I enjoyed you quoting me out of context. That was clever. ;) My “dare” was not to read the Bible. I agree many atheist are better experts on the Bible than many Christians. :) My dare was to read C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity” since I said he was better at explaining the moral code written on the hearts of men – the moral code that is one of the best evidences for their being a God (god); since my mention of the “free pass” seems to insult a few of you, and that was not my intent. My intent was to say, that without a god, each individual becomes their own final authority on what is right and wrong. (not just atheists, each person.)
Respectfully and Kindly,
Karl
PS Christianity is not mentioned in the Constitution, but you should visit Washington DC, scripture is quoted all over the buildings, in early documents, etc. But, yes, there is a lot of confusion over the meaning of “Christian Nation” and many Christians DO push that to mean more than it means – did you notice I’m agreeing with you? Don’t miss it! :)
That’s an awful lot of “if”s there. An awful lot of made-up premises.
Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. The burden of proof is on the one who makes the positive claim, i.e., that there is a sky daddy.
Sexual fun: you’re doing it wrong.
What if you’ve been worshiping the wrong god, and you have to give account to her?
You’re funny.
Don’t give up the day job.
I can assure you that random chance exists.
Point me to the Atheist Creed. As for its “leaders”, we’ve roundly criticized them for Islamophobia and sexism, among other things. As for web sites, books, and teachers, so does everything else. As for zealots, sports teams have those too. You’re making awfully weak points here.
We’re Homo sapiens.
The Big Bang, star and planetary formation, evolution. Fascinating stuff, really, makes the whole primitive Christian morality play look awfully tawdry by comparison.
Begging the question.
What’s your purpose? What’s the master plan you follow? What are the eventual goals of it? Is it demonstrably any better than following the simple plan of living with love for one’s fellow people and trying to ensure everyone is happy and secure? I can actually see the benefits of that in real life and real time.
Prophecies made early in the book that are fulfilled later in the book. I’ve read lots of books like that.
Begging the question again. What would a non-designed nature look like to you? You don’t know, you just feel awe at the nature we have (understandable), and rather than try to understand the complexity of it all, you just retreat into old stories. It’s a failure of imagination.
Which shows how worthless faith is. One can have faith in anything.
Nope. And it would be a bad thing if it were. Unless you mean to throw out all the old embarrassing stuff like stoning the homosexuals and whatnot, and just go on what tends to accord with the secular ethics we’ve developed in the hundreds of years since the Bible, and if that’s the case, then why not just throw out the Bible altogether?
Oh come on, try us. Unless you really think your rationalizations of all the horrible stuff in the Bible really doesn’t pass intellectual muster.
Uh huh. I suppose you know that because you have a personal relationship with the great overmind who is beyond human comprehension. Do tell.
We’re calm. Calmer than you.
Yeah, well my old man could beat up your old man.
We’re bringing the honesty. If you can’t handle that, tough beans.
Sorry, the Redhead is my wife. I am Dr. Nerd to you, as I have an earned doctorate. It also means part of my “purpose” is to teach those who don’t understand, like you.
Why would I read bad apologetics? There are no good apologetics, as they are all presuppositionally based sophistry. The only thing that will get me to believe in your imaginary deity, is the null hypothesis of non-existence, followed by solid and conclusive physical evidence to get it out of the null hypothesis. Evidence that will pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers, as being of divine, and not natural (scientifically explained), origin. Which since the universe, the Earth, and life on Earth is explained by science, means you need something truly stupornatural, like the eternally burning bush. Know its coordinates? If not, there is no evidence for your deity. Which is what we gnu atheists say.
Dr. Nerd,
So you pass on my dare, declaring all apologetics “bad” having not read all apologetics, a bold claim. If you were a genuine intellect, you would not be afraid to read C.S. Lewis or The God Who is There by Francis A. Schaeffer; both classics. An legitimate atheist who is sincere in understanding and DEBUNKING the opposition, should have read these two books so as to have an honest understanding of the other side, rather than all the straw man that have been tossed at me here in this thread. Instead, I find myself defending all kinds of things I don’t even hold to, which is a little ironic.
I have atheist friends, yes, they are friends, good ones in fact, who have read both of those, and were not converted, but can argue more intelligently than you, without hurling insults (and big words) because they have a more accurate understanding of the opposition.
You give atheists a bad rap. I’ve shown a few atheists friends a look at this thread and one posted on my facebook wall, “Don’t you hate it when someone wearing your team colors, through complete incompetence and laziness, scores for the opposing team?” He is a regular poster on this site, by the way.
Any atheist, as I keep saying, who is genuinely sincere in a pursuit of the truth will make SURE the other side is truly wrong, before they write off God. Call it Pascal’s Wager, but I still would not want to be an atheist and end up wrong.
Good day gents. Enjoyed the conversation. I hope you have too. And I hope you can consider it good sparring and nothing more and keep it in good spirits.
If y’all are right, we are all but dust, so no need to get in a tizzy.
I don’t believe you.
I’ve read Lewis and Schaeffer.
Anyone who finds them at all convincing is a moron.
Fundies give xianity a bad rap. Xianity gives xianity a bad rap.
The US religion is losing millions of members a year. It is slowly dying the death of trolls, kooks, wackos, and liars like you.
Xians like you create more atheists in a day than PZ Myers and Dawkins do in a year.
You’re the one who said I was incapable of morals. Sounds pretty insulting to me. To imply, even obliquely, that my failure to follow the dictates of the bible means that I have no sense of responsibility, no resaon for restraint, and no limits on my behavious also sounds pretty insulting to me.
but you have no problem with trying to zing complete strangers with ‘gotchas’.
Why are you allowed to be personal (count the “I’s” and “me’s” in your comment regarding atheism and libertarianism. Sound’s pretty personal to me. Additionally, if I’m not, in some way, personally invested in a conversation, why bother?
But you judge atheists incapable of morality.
Please cite, in the Constitution of the United States of America, where it states that our laws are based on the bible.
Have done that. Repeatedly. I’m an historian by education, avocation, and vocation.
Please cite where it states, in the Constitution of the United States of America, that the law was bible based. By deliberately not creating a state religion (and yes, that was debated during the convention), the framers of the US Consititution explicitely rejected the idea that the US is a Christian nation. One of the founders, some years later, even included that language in The Treaty of Tripoli. Same people, same ideas.
First, I do not view marriage as being yoked as a beast of burden. Second, doesn’t the bible also have no problem with concubines, multiple wives, and even impregnating the servant if your wife is barren? I said nothing about biblical marriage because we, as human beings, have abandoned most of the garbage regarding marriage in that book of mythology.
Where do you think many atheists come from (at least here in the West)? And which sect of Christianity is the correct one? Almost every sect has anathemetized just about every other sect, so which Christian sect? And what if your Christian daughter did fall in love with an atheist? Would you refuse to give your blessing for her happiness? Gotta love that Christian love.
There there are a whole bunch of Christians who would claim that you are not a true Christian. I just call them based on my experience with Christians (I actually know some quite well).
So reading what the bible actually says is now inappropriate. Except for referring to marriage as a yoke. Why is one part still acceptable to you, but others not? Are you lukewarm?
But it says it in the bible. If you can ignore those writings, why not admit that it is all inapplicable to today’s society ignore all of it? Why pick and choose? And, more important, how do you know what god(s) does, or does not, want you to do?
Not a bold claim. Apologetics are for those who are losing their faith in imaginary things. It can give them a pseudo rationale using bad and presuppositional/circular philosophy for continuing belief. I don’t have any belief in your deity, so it won’t work. I know your deity doesn’t exist, as there is no evidence for it. Your deity of the babble is real, not bad philosophy. So, where is your solid and conclusive physical evidence for it? I gave you what evidence you must supply, and it isn’t philosophy. Now, either supply that conclusive physical evidence, or shut the fuck about your imaginary deity existing. Both those are honorable positions. Those who can’t put up, like all godbots, and can’t shut up, like most godbots, are liars and bullshitters, like your apologists.
Gee, here I was thinking what a bad rap you give believers with pseudo intelectualism, pomposity, and arguments from ignorance, and bad, bad philosophy. I’m not changing anything for such a person like you.
And then I said, what if you’re worshiping the wrong god?
What am I, chopped liver? You are such a hypocrite. You whine about tone, then ignore everyone except for the one person who is insulting you. Then you post this ridiculous bit of bluster:
Why, it’s almost as if you’re not really interested in truth, but rather rhetorical masturbation.
And I’m still not convinced that refusing to kiss the ass of the misogynist, murdering, genocidal, manipulative and cruel god(s) of the bible is an insult. Even if god(s) existed, if there were actual evidence, somewhere, for the existence of any god(s), not just the Abrahamic one, I would still refuse to bow down in worship.
If you are right, then this is just one more little jot in the eternal and infinite diary of the great 3-O god. They both seem about equally significant to me.
And again: Calmer than you, Dude.
Karl B, if you are in an honest discussion, and not proselytizing, give us what evidence is required for you to acknowledge your deity is imaginary. If you can’t answer the question honestly, and nothing will, you should just fade into the bandwidth. Because, you will be acknowledging you are just preaching, which is likely to result in the banhammer.
Well, we’re not your friends, so we have no need to stroke your ego, which may be where you’re having difficulty.
There it is. You do not call that insulting? Since I do not believe in god(s), any of them, that means that anything goes, for me, whether or not society, or my own mores, says otherwise? Since I do not kiss the (insert whatever anatomical noun here) of the magical skydaddy, I am incapable of living within society? Maybe I will start insulting you. You’re insulting me, and other atheists, rather consistently.
Which is a wonderful book of presuppositionalism and fancy word play. Read it. Was not impressed.
I did.
How the fuck do you know who I am? You wrote this before I admitted to being an historian, so how do you know? Is this that faith thing again?
You do know that every time you write this, all I can think of is my grandmother down in Maryland who was racist to the core but, since some of her friends were nigras, we were expected to ignore the racism and think of her as all good? You sound like you are proud that you spend time with the social lepers, the atheists, who, since they have no moral direction, are liars, cheaters, thiefs, and incapable of a happy marriage.
No. I am not in the pursuit of Truth. There is no Truth. There is evidence which allows us to craft theories about how things work, that allow us to understand parts of how the cosmos works, and some of that (more now than even 10 years ago) is true, but it is not Truth. Truth is an abstract ideal, a perfection, that is sought by those who are sure that they, and only they, have the One True Answer — be it communism, Christianity, Islam, fascism, or any other authoritarian crede out there. Truth is a weapon to be used against non-believers, or those who don’t believe the right things about the right things, or those who are different. The French crusaders had Truth on their side at Carcassone. Tilly’s troops had Truth on their side at Magdeburg. Pol Pot had Truth on his side in Cambodia. So if you want to search for Truth, for the Ultimate Answer, for Perfection, then I will let you get on with it. But it’ll be without me.
Karl B is really dumb even for a fundie.
Most of us are ex-xians. Where do you think atheists come from, found in cabbage patches?
We know all about xianity. That is why we aren’t xians anymore.
This will totally blow Karl’s mind: John 3:16? Not at all interesting, let along convincing.
Alone even. See? It totally blew my mind too.
52:
And the problem with religion is that it offers WRONG ANSWERS. At least with atheism, you finally have the option to get answers from something else, without worrying about invoking metaphor or selectively disregarding facts so that myths remain intact.
Read: Those who are biased to interpret everything as support for Christianity will see everything as support for Christianity.
You’re a fucking moron. Christianity, as an ideology, is the ultimate escape from accountability. That’s what the concept of salvation MEANS. The fact that you can gain forgiveness from an imaginary God by belief alone, regardless of your deeds, without worrying about the ACTUAL FUCKING PEOPLE you may have harmed and whether or not they also forgive you is the ultimate means to avoid accountability. Denying the existence of a judgmental God because there is no evidence of such doesn’t make us less accountable to one another, you fucking dimbulb.
59: I was referring to a free pass from responsibility from moral law from a Creator or the ability to rationalize what they THEY believe to be right or wrong when they disagree with the Law or even when their conscience says otherwise. Without a belief in God (or god) an aheist becomes their own final authority on what is right or wrong…that is the ultimate free pass.
Which is COMPLETELY different from believers and their cherry-picking Bible quotes in order to find their “objective morality”, right? As has already been pointed out to you, the Bible has some pretty nasty laws in it [you must stone to death: a woman about to be married but isn’t a virgin (Deut 22), disobedient children (Deut 21), gays (Lev 20), rape victims that don’t protest enough (Deut 22), and people who work on the Sabbath (Numbers 15). And thieves should be sold into slavery if they can’t pay for the thing they stole (Exo 22)]. What, exactly, are atheists trying to avoid by not believing in God again?
Burden of proof and problem of proving a negative: look into it.
Pascal’s Wager is flawed, for many reasons. For one, it isn’t a game where either there is “Christian God that rewards you for being Christian and punishes for not being Christian” and “no God”. There could be “God that rewards you for being Hindu, punishes for not”, “God that exists but rewards atheists for following the evidence and punishes believers for being sheep”, “God that rewards people for believing in the Norse pantheon”, etc. etc.
Well, glad to see that with all your bluster about just interpreting evidence differently, you ultimately just swallow Christian beliefs down without complaint simply because it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside and gives you simple, easy, stupid “answers” about subjective questions that can’t be as easily answered by those who aren’t as willing to bullshit you as Christianists are. Great of you to put your cards on the table.
The “incredible design of nature” is a profoundly stupid idea that has been undermined incredibly by the theory of evolution and yet still sticks around a century and a half later because of the ignorami who don’t understand it. And the “prophecies” “fulfilled” have been, as far as I’ve seen, very weak tea.
Little irony heavy there.
Oh really? Then fucking present the clearer picture to us, bucko.
Ever make you wonder that MAYBE, just maybe, you don’t actually have a reasonable case, and rely on getting people to believe in Christianity for emotional reasons before your pathetic excuses for “logical” reasons are ever given the esteem that other Christians give them? Because, really, look at this shit you are spewing. You are basically admitting that you already have to believe in everything regarding Christianity in order to understand it. Do you not understand the problem with that? Do you not how bias works?
FYI, from your 63, this: “A few misconceptions about what Christians believe,” is the kind of bullshit that irks us. You may not see it as directly insulting us, but many of us here are former Christians. Many of us live in majority Christian countries. Many of us have been talking with Christians about their religion for many years. If you think that we are all uniformly misinformed about Christianity, then you better have a good fucking case. Which, of course, you decide to by giving us a definition of “Christian Nation” that would trigger “straw-man” alarms for half of the people defending such a stupid (and often nebulous) concept, and go on to claim, with absolutely no supporting evidence, that the separation of church and state wasn’t meant to be what the Supreme Court currently holds to be. Do you not see the rank condescension in this, even if you can’t see that you are also wrong? Also:
You see? Here you are again: saying that we are too stupid to understand, without even bothering to point out the actual error because we aren’t emotionally primed to accept your “answers”. The “out of context” ploy is an ancient deflection technique, but it is also a transparent one. You’ve got nothing.
Also: Mere Christianity is fucking moronic (pro-tip: scientific “laws” are observations of the way things generally work, and not orders sent down from on high. Also, Lewis’s morality argument is that morality is consistent, except when it isn’t. Anyone who believes that morality as practiced by people has been consistent must not be aware of slavery, racism, misogyny, or, really, much of anything) . I already read it because of the fact that so many Christians salivate over the fucking thing like it was almost as authoritative as the Bible itself, but it’s trite bullshit to anyone who doesn’t already believe. Your “dare you to read it” is just more condescension, and is one of the reasons why you deserve every bit of bile you get, as much as you pretend to be playing nice.
Your personal inadequacies are not nearly as interesting as you think.
Hey raven, we agee! “fundees give xianity a bad rap” on this we agree! I am NOT a fundee! Your view and exposure to xianity is too narrow, and funees drive me nuts, they are far too close minded and judgemental and preachy – I’ve seen that ‘flavor’ of xianity and run away. Its too loud, too obnoxious and please don’t peg me there.
However, if you feel I am proselytizing, I will “fade into the bandwdth” at your request, respectfully. I thought this was an open forum where all were welcome to discuss the above post.
If that is not the case, I will graciously bow out, I do not wish to intrude unwelcome. Forgive me if I stumbled into a lair of atheists where I was not welcome, that was not my intent. If so, I do apologize for any offense I have caused. Atheists ARE my friends, even if that be a one way street in some of your cases.
I wish you all the best. Accept my sincere final greetings, though I will read your posts and only reply if invited to do so. Otherwise, I shall surrender politely with a bow. Not in defeat, but not declaring victory either, nor shall I consider it a tie. For I do not see this as a battle, but as merely a conversation worthy of being had.
So much still that could be said, but I’ll call it a day!
Good day gents!
Karl
That describes you. Loud, obnoxious, and delusional. Fool.
You are acknowledging you were here to proselytize. We all knew that. And you never answered what is required for you to acknowledge your imaginary deity doesn’t exist. At what point does evidence of absence become absence of evidence. About 2500 years ago to any sane person.
Spoken like a true liar and bullshitter. You were here only to preach. Pretending otherwise is bullshit, which we are experts are finding. Funny how you godbots always fail to show any physical evidence for your imaginary deity. And delusional thinking is believing without evidence…
Which parts of the fundamentals of Christianity do you not agree with, and why?
It is an open forum and neither I, nor any of the other regulars here, or any noobies for that matter, can tell you, or any one else to leave and make it stick (we still may do it, but that is reserved for extreme assholes). Keep in mind though, that this is an OPEN FORUM, which means that if I disagree with what you have written, I will disagree. Publicly. You seem to think that an open forum means you can insult people (I am an atheist and yes you did insult me directly, multiple times) but that, since is is open, no one can call you on your bullshit or insult you. Doesn’t work that way.
And knock of the passive aggressive bullshit. You came here, attempted to prosyletize, and multiple people objected. None objected to you, they objected to what you wrote and the implications and innuendos of what you wrote.
I’m not sure if anyone here was actually offended. Insulted, yes, but then I accepted what you wrote and applied it to myself. I am rather sad, but definately not offended. You seem to have a working brain, but I am saddened that, when asked for either a falsifiable god, or evidence for a god, you evaded.
Again, constantly belittling atheists as amoral beings incapable of living in society because we have not internalized the ‘moral’ code of your mythology and then claiming that some of your best friends are atheists comes across, to me at least, as very condescending and defensive. Think of the gay-bashers who, after telling a gay man that he can never marry and will end up in hell, says that some of his best friends are gay. See what I mean?
Still with the passive agressive stuff. If you want to comment here, comment here. Only PZ can banhammer someone. Conversely, I don’t think any of us are going to invite you to comment because it is not our place to do so!
But it is a battle. A battle between Truth-with-a-capital-T and reality-backed-by-actual-physical-and-repeatable-evidence. And when Truth wins, people get hurt and, sometimes, die.
You do know that women can, and do, use the internet, too? And that you cannot always tell who the men and women are by the pseudonyms? or even by the writing?
You want to comment here, that is your decision. Yours and no other (unless you invoke the banhammer). Do not try to put it on me, or any other commenter. You decide.
I have made the decision to comment here. And I have had my ass handed to me a couple of times when I have been egregiously wrong. And, agree or disagree, I continued to comment. But it was my choice. I didn’t wait for someone to ask me to comment. But it is your choice.
=========
meta:
what is it about some commenters that I wall of text?
And wow. Tpyos is strong in me today.
But, it is Friday, and I don’t come back to work for a week.
STAYCATION!
Father Ogvorbis:
My guess? SIWOTI. It’s hard to make succinct replies to someone who is wrong about oh so many things, and to such an incredible degree. I mean, lauding C.S. Lewis, for fuck’s sake! That’s pretty much giving the game away, proof positive that they don’t know shit.
Com pare:
with:
Now, which time were you lying, Karl?
What baffles me in this conversation, honestly, sincerely, I’m really struggling here – is how I’m called such insulting names – cussed at, ridiculed etc. and I’ve done none of that in return. I’ve not set out to insult anyone, if I have insulted anyone by my opinion/position, I have apologized. I certainly could be insulted as that has been the intentional effort of those who have directed such language at me. Hardly seems fair in what is being purported as “open dialogue” – do you all condone the words, language and names I’m being called merely for believing in God and attempting to explain why? It should be obvious, I hope, I have not once intentionally name called or insulted.
All I’ve done is disagree. I’ve not intentionally insulted anyone, I’ve actually bent over backwards to insult those on my OWN side who I’m ashamed of, even apologizing for Christians who have hurt people, been obnoxious and loud, trying desperately to keep this civil and respectful, and I get bile and insults tossed at me in nearly every post. It baffles me.
You ask for proof of an imaginary god, your request is flawed because your assumed result is in your question. Can’t you see the bias in your very question? You can’t prove somethin imaginary! LOL God can not be proved. But that does not mean he does not exist. Ideas can’t be proven empiracly. The Big Bang can’t be proven empiractful fellas. Only things that can be demonstrated can be proven. We can not demonstrate the Big Bang any more than we can demonstrate Creation or God. Both require a leap of faith to accept that Something came from nothing.
I agree (!) there are serious issues with Christianity – issues that require study, but I have found that they are issues that do not require throwing out the baby with the bathwater, because I have found there are more issues left unanswered with atheism. (that is a statement of opinion) for myself.
I am not preaching. I am not judging anyone else. I am speaking for myself only. I am very interested in people intellectual journeys. I share mine, and I do listen to others. I have not merely scanned your posts, I have read them. I dont enjoy the insults, but I read and search for truth.
My only concern with atheist is when I believe they are rejected distortions of Christianity, as there are many. As I said way up this page, the biggest problem with Christianity is Christians, misrepresenting it, and misrepresenting Christ, and the Catholic Church… people get hurt or disillusioned and they reject God, and I think that is a mistake.
OK, let loose on the insults, I’m braced! Tho I do wish this could be a more civil conversation. I certainly have tried to be so from my end. I mean no insult, we simply are approaching this topic from two world views, former xians or not. I dont pretend to know anyone’s background, but dont pretend to know mine.
(Ironicaly, watching the Disney film Oceans right now…. it just makes me marvel at God’s creativity, by the way! It is all just too incredible for chance!!)
It is wide open. Nobody is making you stop posting. Heck, most of us are openly inviting you to back up your assertions and address our arguments. If you don’t have the stomach to do so, then you certainly may leave, but that’s your prerogative.
Again, what about this dialogue is not “open”?
I don’t have to. I’m not my brother’s keeper, and I have no obligation to any doctrine (hey, you said so yourself) to make sure my fellow atheists stay on message or conduct themselves in a particular way. Some of us are more tired than others of having to justify not believing in tall tales. Some of us are more tired than others of mistreatment at the hands of the ruling religion (even if they’re not True Card-Carrying Christians in your eyes).
It means he is meaningless, and therefore might as well not exist.
Muddled English nonwithstanding, the Big Bang is a cosmological model that explains a great deal of astronomical observations. It may be disproven with more information. But as it stands, it is a pretty good explanation.
And at any rate, the origin of the vastness of the universe does not necessarily have any bearing on how our human species should live.
Why does something have to come from nothing? Maybe there always has been something. There are lots of ways of looking at it, and many great minds trying to figure it out. There are more things in the universe than are dreamt of in your
philosophy. The more quantum-minded of us could probably explain to you how something indeed can come from nothing and does all the time, but I’ll defer to their expertise on that subject.
Sheesh, at least the Catholic Church has centuries of intellectual tradition behind it, I might (might) be more inclined to believe what they have to say about the sky daddy than some random fellow on the internet. But let’s just say that most of us have heard about the whole god thing from dozens of different angles.
The other thing is that we value science. It is the best way to separate what is true (or shall we say, what best explains what we observe in reality) from what we would like to be true. If you give vague guidance to “seek God with our hearts”, then we’re not going to believe you. It is not good enough to fool ourselves, we have to be able to show it to others with rigor and precision. Plenty of people believe in lots of different religious stories with just as much conviction as you do, how would you convince them that they are wrong? Or if you think that sort of thing is rude, or that everyone has a right to their own opinion about it and whatnot, then why bother talking about it at all?
If you were to get off the cross for a second and actually address folks’ actual arguments, you might get more out of this.
Nope, that’s not irony, try again Alanis.
Whoop de doo for you. I think you diminish nature by attributing it to some cosmic spook who wants everybody to grovel before him and wants to monitor everyone’s genitals at all times. But hey, agree to disagree, eh?
I don’t know about you, but for me it’s Sunday and I don’t have a lot to do.
I’ll bypass the whining about tone. Talking about who offended whom is not going to go anywhere.
Failure. Ideas can be proven logically. But God isn’t an idea: God is (supposedly) an entity. The Big Bang can be proven empirically . If you believe in something that is supposed to exist in reality, and not just in your head, and do so without any empirical evidence (or an incredibly good deductive/inductive argument), then you are unjustified in that belief. Profoundly unjustified. Unforgivably, ridiculously unjustified.
So then you don’t believe in history or forensics, right? Because we can’t demonstrate a George Washington or go back in time to show a jury a murder in progress, both are moot subjects, right?
Okay, I’ll bite: What problems are there with Christianity that don’t pretty much undermine it completely? And what are these unanswered issues about atheism, that aren’t the completely illogical bilk about “well, what about the meaning of life?” that you tossed out previously? No, “well, it’s just my opinion” isn’t sufficient to justify having no support for that opinion. Either keep your uninformed opinions to yourself (because no rightly gives a fuck) or give us what informs your opinions. We accept no substitutes.
We are familiar with the many flavors of Christianity here. We all know the creationist fundies. But we also know of Liberal Catholics who don’t abide the Church rules strictly but still weep over crackers. We know of quasi-deist, milquetoast believers who defend God as a watered-down, non-intervenionist, intentionless creative principle. We have IDiots, who are slightly less stupid than full-fledged creationists, but still think that the argument from design is a valid argument in light of evolution. We know of the multitude of cafeteria Christians, who cherry pick far more than the fundies, blatantly ignoring core Christian doctrines in order to believe that everything/everyone goes to heaven and that Hell doesn’t even exist (see here : 80% of Americans [the same percent of Americans that consider themselves Christians) believe in Heaven and angels, but only 70% believe in the devil or hell, meaning roughly 10% of Americans fall into this category. To say nothing of the fact that, here , 44% of Americans [twice as many Catholics compared to Protestants] believe you will go to Heaven if a good person, regardless of beliefs. And only 40% of Christians in Britain believe in Hell). We know of Christians who run the gamut from barely not an atheist all the way to Fred Phelps. So, what is the face of Christianity that we should be addressing?
You truly don’t understand evolution, do you? Your “ooo, but it looks so designed!” case for your religion is dead in the water, and yet you don’t even notice.
Fuckwit can’t read for comprehension. His deity is imaginary until he proves otherwise with solid and conclusive physical evidence. And avoidance of physical evidence, along with attempts at belittling, which is typical of proselytizers, is de rigueur. Yawn, boring godbot.
God isn’t and idea. The deity of the babble, Yahweh, is a physical entity interacting with world. Traces would be left. What part of reality aren’t you seeing?
Nope, try the peer reviewed scientific literature found in libraries of higher learning world wide like this one, compared to your static and unerrant babble and its imaginary deity. You lose.
Mentioning god without providing physical and conclusive evidence for your imaginary deity and an inerrant babble? THAT IS THE DEFINITION OF PREACHING. You lie.
If you were listening, we would know what is necessary for you to acknowledge your deity is imaginary. You are preaching…
If it interacts with the world like the god of the babble, it can be. If it doesn’t interact with the world, why bother with believing in it? What a loser.
Karl B.,
no-one is a mindreader, especially not on the internet, where important audiovisual cues are lacking. If you exhibit traits typical of godbots here (and I’m deferring here to the judgement of those much more experienced with them than I am), then you don’t have to be surprised that you’ll be accused of being one.
Incidentally, insults are encouraged here. It doesn’t mean you have to use them (I use them sparingly myself) but complaining about it is known here as tone trolling. You’re also focused way too much on one type of insults, when you’re guilty of another type of insult, implying that atheists had no morals. You know, there is a way to insult and denigrate people without using swearwords.
Pelamun:
Riffing off of that, he also implied:
-Atheists only deal with distorted versions of Christianity and take parts of the Bible out of context in order to criticize it.
-Atheists have depressing/no answers to the major questions about life.
-Atheists are too biased (i.e. not biased in favor of Christianity enough) to accept evidence that God exists. And part of this supposed bias has to do with the “no morals” smear.
Karl has managed to say that we are dishonest in our refutations, too ignorant (regardless of our education or experiences) to know True Christianity, that we have no way to offer up hope to ourselves and others, and that we are, as you have stated, without morals, and our lack of morals is what drives our lack of belief.
But, Karl, even if you understand how you were insulting to us, please understand this also: we don’t really give a fuck. The most important part is to actually be factually correct. If you had facts on your side, but were an asshole about it, you would be much better received than if you came in here speaking kindly, but confidently presenting ideas that were wrong. And, no matter whether you are an asshole about your ideas or not, if you present them confidently, you are asking to be torn down if you are wrong. Don’t fret yourself about whether you were so inept that you offended us without realizing it: worry about the fact that pretty much everything you have said thus far is laughably incorrect or betrays laughable ignorance. That’s what we really care about; the tone is just impersonal internet background noise.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA
no. The USA is very specifically a secular nation. It has that in common with only France and Turkey. You have been told lies about the foundations of the USA and its Founding Fathers, and you’re now repeating them without ever having bothered to fact-check. This is why I don’t believe you when you say you’re intellectually honest; you didn’t bother to go and find out whether this was actually true by looking for evidence that would refute it, because if you had, you wouldn’t be believing such factually incorrect things.
you mean deists. And no, the founding fathers did not think the bible is a great source of law and freedom, which is why no part of the Constitution is based on it.
you sound like you’re getting your history from that prolific liar Barton. Separation of Church and State is weaker now than it was at the beginning of the USA, what with “god” scribbled on everything, prayer in congress, a christian holiday as an official national holiday, and now even inofficial religious tests for people who want to run for office. NONE of that existed in the early days of your country; congress worked through the first few Christmases, and the US national motto was “E Pluribus Unum”, for example.
ther isn’t anything outside of society’s rules and one’s own conscience. As I already said, there is a scientific study showing that “god” is really just one’s own will and conscience. Historical study of Christians throughout history also confirms that they simply followed the social mores of the time, rather than standing in any significant way apart from them.
see, this is how we know Christian morality isn’t actually moral. It lumps harmless things with things that very much harm people as if they were equally bad.
ew. C.S. Lewis is a hack and that book is one of the more transparently weak forms of Christian apologia, which has been long-debunked.
did you not read what I said? most of us were Christians once, we already gave Christianity many chances, but it failed to deliver.
lol, that it did, but not in the way you seem to think.
appeal to authority is not a valid argument. also, it’s adorable how you project authoritarian thinking on us; we didn’t “reject” anything because PZ told us to. We can reason for ourselves, and most of us were already over christianity before coming here.
then you don’t know what “proof” is.
so much for intellectual honesty and following where the evidence leads. you treat knowledge as if it were opinion that people can legitimately differ on. that is not true. If you were intellectually honest, you’d actually engage my refutations of our claims, instead you retreat because your shallow rhetoric didn’t convince. That’s not following the evidence, that’s not intellectually honest.
incredulity and wishful thinking are not valid arguments.
confirmation bias. You never test your hypothesis for whether it is needed or explains the evidence in those DVDs and whatnot. You “feel” you are right, and that’s not intellectually honest or following the evidence.
what has “pushed” many people away from “him” is the complete and utter lack of evidence for any such being ever having existed. your god is an unneeded hypothesis.
that one’s easy: atheists are one of the most disregarded minorities in the US, and being constantly told they’re somehow damaged or diminished; they’re told that they’re afraid, like you’ve done; they’re told that they’re not honest in their rejection of religion, like you’ve done; they’re told that they are atheists because they want to be able to do immoral things, which you’ve almost done.
And being constantly lied about and misrepresented like that pisses people off.
nope. morals are socially dependent, there’s virtually no rule that’s universal, and those that are serve obvious evolutionary purposes. God is once again not a needed hypothesis and can be discarded, so morality and the ability to be moral are not evidence for god.
and how many times do we have to explain to you that this is incorrect? Humans are a social species; we always and instinctively answer to others in our society. those who don’t are either sociopaths or psychopaths, i.e. they have a flaw in their brain-wiring; atheists are generally neither sociopaths nor psychopaths.
that doesn’t make the USA a Christian nation any more than it makes France one, or Turkey a Muslim nation (hint: all three are legally secular nations, unlike say Sweden and Britain, which are actual Christian Nations)
the courtier’s reply is an invalid argument; one doesn’t need to concern oneself with the arguments and conclusions when the premises are shown to be false or lacking. This is because it’s irrelevant whether the conclusions and arguments are sound when the premises are wrong, because the premises being wrong will make even a sound argument lead to wrong conclusions.
no. a sincere atheist merely needs to show that there’s no evidence for god. everything else is window-dressing.
lovely double standard, considering you’ve shown that you’ve never done this for most of the things you believe in. Besides, this is reversal of the burden of evidence: those who make positive claims must show that the Null Hypothesis is not sufficient to explain the evidence. No theist of any religion ever accomplished this, and so I stick to the Null Hypothesis, which so far explains all the evidence I’ve ever encountered.
you have the same chance of being wrong and being punished for it as an atheist has. Because there’s more than two options, there’s millions of options. I already said that. Did you understand a word of what I said to you previously?
“no women on pharyngula” *rolleyes*
and yet you did, on several occasions. Or do you think your repeated claims that a “honest” atheist would do what you told them to were not insults? that atheists don’t “want” there to be a god?
those are all insults that cut deeper than name-calling.
no, what you’ve done is what is considered “civil and respectful” in religious communities. This isn’t one. Bad words are not considered uncivil or disrespectful per se, but intellectual dishonesty, bad argumentation, and double standards are considered very rude; telling atheists how to be proper, “honest” atheists by making illogical claims and argument is disrespectful.
“proof” is for mathematics. we want evidence. and no, demanding evidence is not begging the question, it’s how honest gathering of knowledge works.
incorrect. for example, it’s very easy to prove that the idea “god exists” exists. all you need to do is take a survey. the existence of ideas is one of the easiest things to show evidence for, in fact. But I note that you compare god to an idea. Is that all god is? because atheists know that god exists as an idea, you know.
again, “proof” is for mathematics. OTOH, there’s fuckloads of evidence for the Big Bang, quite unlike for gods of any kind. also, stop referring to everyone here as if everyone were male. it’s disrespectful. find a neutral appellation, or drop them entirely.
no, only mathematical claims can be proven. For everything else, there’s hypothesis testing against the Null Hypothesis. The Big Bang passes that test, god does not.
false equivalence is not a valid argument. One of those has evidence for it, the other does not. also, thing pop into existence out of nothing all the time. You need to keep up with your physics better, if you don’t want to sound completely ignorant.
there’s no evidence for a baby, so the bathwater is simply unnecessary.
once more, you show that you care more about the existence of answers than about whether they’re the right answers. That’s not following the evidence, and that’s not intellectually honest.
that’s not true. you’ve made plenty of judgments in the course of this conversation.
bah. that’s not intellectually honest conversation, that’s relativistic “you have your opinion about reality, I have my opinion about reality, and it’s all good” shallow, feel-good blather. Intellectually honest discussion is more than sharing; it’s pitting ideas against each other to see which one is less supported by the evidence.
<blockquote?My only concern with atheist is when I believe they are rejected distortions of Christianity, as there are many.the existence of god is not a distortion of Christianity; you’re very confused about what “atheism” means.
Argument from Incredulity is a logical fallacy and not a valid argument. Also, your complete lack of knowledge of how evolution works is also not a valid argument, it’s a logical fallacy called Argument from Ignorance.
Francis Shaeffer wouldn’t lie to me!
FFS, the dude was predestined for salvation.
+++++
Introduction to Schaeffer’s work, which has been pretty influential on evangelical political thought:
How Should We Then Live, about 5 hours of video. Also on Youtube, Vimeo, etc.
Oh, fun!
10 minutes of Schaeffer’s Whatever Happened to the Human Race?
Excerpt from the comments: “One shouldn’t take this video seriously.”
Quite a list of lies from Karl B. Starting with his not a fundie xian one. He is channeling fundie-ism word per word. Karl B. is a fundie xian death cultist.
I’m not going to list them. It would take hours and be repetitious.
Wrong. We can see it with our telescopes and satellites. As even children know, when you look back in distance, you look back in time. We can see back to almost the beginning of our universe, 13 billion years.
BTW, kook, the Big Bang theory was first proposed by George LeMaitre, a Jesuit priest, The RCC and most other xian sects don’t have a problem with it.
There goes your god. The Invisible Sky Monster looks more and more like the Nonexistent Sky Monster.
An astonishingly stupid thing to say. Karl only speaks for himself, no one else. Even most Catholics would disagree with a lot of what he says. There are 42,000 different xian sects with more being spawned every year. All claim to be the One True Xian Church while the others are all Fake Xians.
They don’t agree on anything except that they all hate each other. No one speaks for xianity, just themselves and their cult.
This is BTW one proof that xianity is just fairy tales. Science converges on the truth via empiricism and methodological naturalism. Religions diverge on their “truth”. They have no way of deciding what is true, except the time honored and frequently used method of killing each other.
PS Karl is doing the Gish Gallop. Stringing huge numbers of lies together and hoping everyone is too busy being appalled to even bother reading them.
Karl might be a fundie Catholic.
Trying to read through his incoherent gibberish is trying. It looks like something written by a psychiatric patient.
There are fundie Catholics. They frequently hate fundie Protestants.
More often they drop the RCC and join fundie churches. In the last few years the RCC has lost a huge 20 million members. 3 million of them joined fundie cults.
I see ahs can’t present any evidence for its imaginary deity either. Another disappointing and boring delusional fool.
Since your imaginary deity doesn’t exist, there is no salvation. You have nothing cogent to offer, just more lies and bullshit.
citing Lewis and Schaeffer?
I once again marvel at your shallow, facile understanding of the enemy.
Nope, not really.
+++++
Reader take note: raven treats mental illness per se as an insult.
you really need to stop being triggered this easily, nerd; ahs is not a christian, he’s an old poster under a newly abbreviated handle, showing where Karl probably got his misinformation about the US and its Founding Fathers from. He’s not a christian.
Looks like ahs is syzzgz with a new alias. Exact same style.
Sockpuppeting is a bannable offense.
You said I was using mental illness as an insult. Not me.
Some people are just mentally ill and they frequently babble away on line. It can just be a fact.
Speaking of insults, you are just a troll and most likely an alias for the recently departed syzzgys. Did it ever occur to you that someone who keeps getting banned from internet boards might have personality problems?
And never once a Calvinist! Chip Berlet turned me on to Schaeffer.
oh FFS; you are being an idiot. And ahs is right about Karl not being a Catholic.
I picked up that he isn’t a xian.
He’s still a troll.
As the number of atheists approach the number of US citizens, the number of troll atheists will approach the number of US trolls.
Being an atheist is no guarantee of being sane, educated, or normal.
strange gods before me.
Your taxonomical skills are just terrible in all regards.
Unfortunately, as the link documents, I’ve caught you unequivocally doing it against me, as well as txpiper.
I’d just as well you start living up to your better image of yourself that you apparently carry, though.
It can indeed just be a fact. You don’t use it that way, though.
Jesus Christ.
in case you haven’t noticed, that comment was addressed at nerd, who did react to ahs as if he were a christian.
and no, ahs is not a troll; he merely points out that you’re wrong both in saying Karl is Catholic, and in saying he sounds like a “psychiatric patient”, since neither is true. As American Christians go, Karl is actually fairly coherent and cogent; he’s just very very wrong, and doesn’t know what most of the concepts he’s trying to use actually mean.
Well so what in the hell was he then? Besides a weird troll.
He was channeling fundie-ism word for word. While denying he was a fundie.
The difference between fundie Catholics and fundie Protestants isn’t all that much. They frequently steal material from each other. For that matter the fundie Moslems frequently steal material from fundie xians and just change god to Allah.
They are similar enough that in the last few years, 3 million Catholics bolted and joined fundie Protestant churches.
maybe, but Catholics would never call the RCC an offshoot of Christianity like Karl did. It’s far more likely, judging by his arguments, that he’s a garden-variety evangelical; or so-called “non-denominational”
not that it really matters all that much which flavor of christianity he belongs to; he’s wrong on the things he says explicitly, no need to try to guess what further wrongness there may be, even if it likely exists in some form or another
Ummm, no. As a former mainline moderate xian, Karl would stick out like a 2 headed, green skinned Martian with antennae in just about any of those churches.
And I didn’t find anything he said coherent at all. It was routine fundie xian god babble that displayed enormous ignorance and a near complete ability to reason.
Do you think he actually learned one single minor point for the number of replies tossed his way? I doubt he even could understand them.
I’ve no complaint about it, myself. The consequences of a false positive are quite minor, and Nerd doesn’t use any illiberal insults. :)
of course he would, since his beliefs are different; that’s a red herring, since believing something else from other Christians is not a sign of mental illness.
not relevant to whether his own writing is or isn’t more coherent and cogent than that of the average American Christian. But on its own terms, it also doesn’t paint him as anything other than average, since many Christians wouldn’t have learned a thing from any of the responses either, and quite a number of those points would also bounce off without ever penetrating. Such is the nature of ideology: it’s at times impenetrable.
He has stated at least twice that he disagrees with the Catholic Church. And ahs is ad hominum salvator, with the “om” symbol and everything. Come on, this is sloppy even for you (and Nerd).
In fairness, not everybody has the right fonts installed. Some will see an empty box or nothing at all.
That’s a matter of some dispute.
What’s certain is that raven, noticing “ahs” for the first time in this thread, had no rational basis for crying troll.
I didn’t wade through all his gibberish. It was a rather large pile of lies, logical fallacies, and incoherent assertions and my time and lifespan are of some value to me.
Doesn’t matter. Given the number of lies he strung together, probably everything was a lie. Lying is one of the three sacraments of fundie xians and it is very reliable. He was channeling fundie-ism word for word while denying any affiliation.
Babbling like a loon is though. Some trolls are just the internet equivalent of the guys pushing shopping carts around the park while clutching a bottle shaped brown paper bag.
C’mon, schizophrenics make up 1% of the US population, 3 million people, and they have lots of free time, quite often not being employed. You see them on the internet a lot.
You may have the last word or last 1 million words. This thread has become pointless and I’ve got stuff to do.
What an odd way of saying “I was wrong.”
Pelamun and Anteprepro, I must thank you both for you very helpful posts on how I insulted you all, – and especially Anteprepro for the clarification the irrelevance of tone over facts. That is very helpful. I am here to learn my friends, (i consider you that, even if it is not reciprocated, whether you believe it or not, I am not being passive aggressive or intentionally insulting.)
The problem you are unable to see, is that the “facts” you seek are the very SAME facts you rely upon. The facts are all around you! Every fact of science I agree with. Metaphysics is really the realm we are in, and it relies on a totally separate set of rules than your every day science, and you are attempting to force the rules of physical science on to metaphysics which isn’t truly playing by the rules. It is similar to when evolutionists apply microevolutionarily evidence to macroevolution – when the two are worlds apart, AND put Christians in a camp of being against microevolution, which they indeed are not – microevolution has been indeed scientifically proven, but to transfer that evidence into the sphere of macroevolution and metaphysics is a jump that appears to be logical, but it is a leap of faith.
A logic leap – yes, but a leap none the less.
In the end, the issues with the Bible and with Christians are too married to the debate. I believe if you could separate those, even temporarily, and come back to them later with some objectivity, you might be able to come to some conclusion that there is a God, or the possibility of a God, even if he/she/it was not the God of Christianity.
That’s where deists come from. (of course)
Working from that point of view, the question is then begged, if there is a god, would he want to know or communicate with his creation… and that is what philosophically leads me back to christianity, despite the things about it that I don’t like initially, and the vast corruptions in it I see over the years as man has corrupted it for personal or political purposes over the centuries.
I supposed now I should insult someone, if that is what is expected! (according to a post above) But I feel I am the guest here, so I won’t.
I am not a Catholic, I am an evangelical, and have always attended a non-denominational church. Think Rick Warren, Billy Graham, if you need a context for what “sect” of Christianity I come from. I am not from the fundamental or charastmatic leaning, those are the two extremes of the evangelical church. The middle is very non-political, non-nutso, don’t make the news, dont protest and aren’t the haters, judgers and weirdos portrayed in TV, movies and network news. It gets old being parodied that way because there is a strong solid line of Christians who are simply followers of Christ who cringe at the same stuff you do and if it weren’t for having discovered the truth within this mess of Christianity, we’d be outta here too.
I’m sorry that raven thinks I’m lying. I wouldn’t be investing my time here if I was lying. I have work to do, but I’m trying to give of my time to correct misconceptions, just as you are trying to correct my misconceptions. I am honoring you by reading and changing my thinking, as I learn. I wish you would honor me by doing the same. That doesnt’ mean agreeing with me, but it means reading and taking my intent and words as being sincere, even if I am wrong from your perspective. A lie is an intentional misleading, that I am not doing, just as I do not think any of you are lying, even if I think you are wrong, I believe you all to be sincere, even when you are harsh or even downright mean.
Karl
FYI – I’m not a troll ;) I think we’ve been on topic, and I rarely visit atheist websites, I was invited here by a regular visitor of this site, who is very much enjoying the conversation, but remaining silent so as to keep his identity a secret. (He knows some of you)
2ndly, My statement about the Catholic Church being an “off-shoot” has been misunderstood. I have a BA in Church History and a Masters in Bible Theology. I understand that the Catholic Church came first, and protestant church later… what I am referring to as an “off-shoot” is that the Catholic Church strayed from the true doctrine of Christ and the reformation returned to the teaching of Christ… so by offshoot I meant, it strayed from the teaching of Christ by giving authority to the Church instead of where it belonged, Christ with each individual having a direct connection to God through Christ, with no need a priest to communicate with God for him, which is what the book of Hebrews was all about, the “priesthood of the believer” – trying to keep this short. When the Catholic Church said you needed to confess to a priest (and worse, invested purgatory!) and invented the infallibility of the Pope, the sainthood of Mary and many other things, it got off track, and the Crusades and many other bad things resulted because men were running the church as a political machine – it was no longer the church of christ, but a man run institution using the name of Christ for man’s own purposes, power, money, political conquest, etc. While the Catholic Church has redeemed itself in many ways today, there is much confusion now because there is this huge split and many of those false teachings remain still. Then of course, you have distortions that set in later… but I’ll stop there.
That is probably more than interested readers here anyway. But to say, when you reject Christianity, you are often rejecting what God also rejects. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t still true followers who are following the truth as it was intended to be.
Over and out. :o)
except for the ones you’ve already contradicted in your previous posts?
no, not really. it’s like this: a god that has effects on the world is measurable and thus physically detectable; a god that isn’t detectable doesn’t have any effects on reality and is thus irrelevant; an unneeded hypothesis, as it were.
I should add though that you have identified as a Christian, not a deist or theist. As such, you have to contend with the fact that issues at the core of Christianity as a religious belief-system are issues that supposedly took place in observable reality, but have not in fact been observed.
there is no such thing as “macroevolution”. this is where your statement that you agree with scientific facts is belied. in order for what you call “microevolution” to not result in “macroevolution”, you have to posit a new mechanism that would prevent the former from becoming the latter; no such mechanism has been proposed, and no such retardation of evolution has been observed to necessitate the hypothesis of such a mechanism.
it
Karl B:
No.
Your complaint is not just irrelevant, but indeed ignores that our epistemology (rational empiricism — that against which you contend) is metaphysics, and is certainly not merely limited to “physical science”.
Karl B:
Bah.
Your appeal to authority is risible, and my lip curls at you for that no less than for your apparent ignorance that what you read as “the teaching of Christ” is written well after the death of that literary character (and is ambiguous and contradictory, to boot!).
sorry, hand slipped. I wasn’t done yet
except for the ones you’ve already contradicted in your previous posts?
no, not really. it’s like this: a god that has effects on the world is measurable and thus physically detectable; a god that isn’t detectable doesn’t have any effects on reality and is thus irrelevant; an unneeded hypothesis, as it were.
I should add though that you have identified as a Christian, not a deist or theist. As such, you have to contend with the fact that issues at the core of Christianity as a religious belief-system are issues that supposedly took place in observable reality, but have not in fact been observed.
there is no such thing as “macroevolution”. this is where your statement that you agree with scientific facts is belied. in order for what you call “microevolution” to not result in “macroevolution”, you have to posit a new mechanism that would prevent the former from becoming the latter; no such mechanism has been proposed, and no such retardation of evolution has been observed to necessitate the hypothesis of such a mechanism.
It’s factually, empirically incorrect that Chrstians as a group reject what you call “macroevolution”. The majority of Christians have absolutely no problem with the concepts in the Theory of Evolution.
again: macroevolution is exactly the same thing as microevolution; there is no mechanism that would prevent small changes to become large changes over time. Saying otherwise is like saying adding drops of water to each other cannot possibly make an ocean, or a single gray hair will never lead to your haircolor changing from brown to gray.
factually incorrect.
how would one do so, without any evidence for a god? besides, divorcing “god” from chritianity and the bible leaves thousands of other gods; not that there’s any evidence for them either, but I don’t see you contemplating any of those either.
you don’t really know the meaning of the word “possible”. the LHC creating black holes (or dragons) is “possible”; the air separating itself so that half a room is just oxygen, while the other molecules are in the other half of the room is “possible”. “possible” is a pretty useless word in assessing reality: probability, evidence, and explanatory power are much more useful concepts.
actually, the question-begging is in the assumption that god=creator. Not all gods are creators, not all creators are gods. And I note also that christianity isn’t the only religion that posits a communicative creator-god. You’re pretending as if atheist, deist, and christian were the only choices; that’s obviously, blatantly, untrue.
my brain is made of awesome. what do I get for being right? :-p
“the personal is the political” applies everywhere, not just to feminism. there is no such thing as an apolitical thing, unless it’s like your metaphysical god and has no effect whatsoever on anything in the world.
you didn’t discover truth, you discovered something you liked. Humans do not possess any method with which to tell whether something is actually really true; we have a single method that lets us know when something isn’t true, so we can weed out ideas one by one. That tool is not Christianity, and in fact, that tool has repeatedly shown claims of Christianity (and all other religions) to be factually incorrect.
but nothing of what you’ve said about yourself is in any way contrary to the ideas we have about chrstians; there’s a great variety of christians of course, so sometimes we think you’re one kind but you turn out to be another, but it’s simply not true that atheists don’t know what “real” christianity is like. it’s just that atheists are non-partisan in accepting christians’ claims about themselves, since there isn’t an objective meaning to the term, beyond a vague association with European religious traditions and terms.
you have to understand: you’ve not said anything that some other christian hasn’t also already said at some point in the past. you have given us no new material to learn from, only re-issued materials that people have refuted in the past. There’s atheist writings that in detail take apart every single claim you’ve made, and probably a number of claims you haven’t mentioned but would, given enough time. The TalkOrigins Archive comes to mind, as well as Frank Schaeffer’s debunkings of himself and his dad. And I know there are people who’ve gone through the troubles of debunking C.S. Lewis at length, too.
point of interest: don’t say things like that. They sound vaguely threatening to people who belong to a discriminated against minority, especially on the internet where they are pseudonymous because they’re not “out” offline for fear of negative consequences.
oy. is that what they teach in schools these days?
the reformation, didn’t return to anything, it created entirely new branches of christianity that didn’t really resemble 1st and 2nd century christianities. also, it should be noted that whatever the “original teaching of christ” may have been, if they ever existed, we simply do not have any access to them. Critical analysis of the four evangelists plus paul reveals that they’ve pretty much wrote what suited their own version of what christianity was supposed to be; they were homogenized a bit later on, but they had entirely different agendas when written.
Karl B.
No, you don’t get to tell people they are your friends when not only have you never met them, but they quite clearly dislike and despise you. It is insulting (as well as dishonest) to refer to people as your friends when they do not agree. Your claim that yuo are here to learn is also an obvious lie.
An even more barefaced lie: in the same comment you make clear that you’re a creobot moron.
Do find out what “begging the question” means, you semi-literate dolt. You mean “raises the question”. It is indeed a real question: if there is a god that is interested in communicating with us, why is it so fucking useless at doing so? The answer that it wants us to find it by faith (i.e. by believing without evidence) is simply a cop-out. Moreover, Christians in particular can’t consistently use it and believe in the Biblical miracles: if God was willing to provide clear evidence of his existence then, why not now?
Vile misogynist and homophobic scum, both of them, so presumably you’re the same.
BTW, Nerd and raven – you’ve both made fools of yourselves here.
Flounce # What? Liars and bullshitters can’t stick the flounce. We have your number Karl, liar and bullshitter for your imaginary deity. Still no physical evidence for it, you need the equivalent of the eternally burning bush. Funny how you don’t lead with it, or any specific evidence for that matter. Lots of generalized hand waving, smoke, and mirrors. Typical presuppositional proselytizer.
Ughh. You illogically associate anything natural as evidence for God, don’t you?
Can you give us these “rules” that would let us know, with intellectual rigor and consistency, metaphysical things? If not, then your appeal to “metaphysics” is just an excuse to make shit up without worrying what science says. It doesn’t matter whether or not something metaphysical exists way out there: if you have no method of knowing that it does, and showing that it does, then we have no reason of believing that it does. It’s that simple. For an example of this idea, see Russell’s Teapot.
Please. There is no such distinction between micro and macroevolution. There is just evolution. If you agree that species can change dramatically due to the accumulation of genetic changes, directed under pressure of natural selection, then what exactly is stopping speciation ? What exactly is the point that makes you think
that common descent isn’t a clear, logical conclusion based on the facts of how we know these changes can occur, and based on the genetic evidence we have of species similarity? Given ALL of the evidence, there is little doubt that common descent is the best explanation, and all of the people who are doubtful of it for the sole purpose of reading Genesis literally will not change that, and will be forever unable to come up with a better explanation. Do you actually know what you are talking about?
And yet you are the only who has consistently whined about the deeds of Christians. Please note: The only thing that those other Christians that you mention do is increase how passionate we are on the subject. They do not change our criticisms of the Bible itself, and of common Christian doctrines.
Are you honestly saying that we are atheists instead of deists, because Christians are mean? How illogical do you think we are? We are not deists because the deist “God” is indistinguishable from no god. There is no reason for us to believe such a vague, nebulous god exists, so the mere (slight) possibility that such a thing exists out in the aether somewhere is not sufficient for us to actually believe that it does.
Insults are common and accepted. That doesn’t mean they are mandatory :D
How so? By not having a recent Crusade? I would think the whole mass child-rape cover-up thing would’ve been the opposite of redeeming…
You seem to be under the misconception that we reject Christianity because of Christians. You seem to have repeated that idea several times. As I’ve mentioned before, we are aware of a wide array of interpretations of the Bible, and of what the Bible says that the vast majority of those interpretations intentionally ignore as well. We are very much capable of criticizing sets of beliefs or the Bible itself without fretting about the actions and attitudes of related believers. Just like we are able to criticize the Republican party platform and typical stances they make without specifically referencing their politicians or a few jerks we met that were Republicans. We tend to be rational people here, and don’t leap to the conclusion that a given ideology is wrong because their adherents are jackasses. We explore the ideologies, find out whether it is wrong, and then look on in despair at advocates who act like jackasses, reviling them all the more because of how errant their beliefs are. Of course, the problem is that you don’t do the same. You seem to have not so much as explored atheist ideology or even found atheists that acted like jackasses: you found atheist friends that you assumed to be exceptions to a stereotype and continued to assume that atheism was linked with immorality and emotional dissatisfaction, and this was sufficient for you to reject it. That isn’t logic, and if you think that we work in a similar fashion, you are sorely mistaken.
Gents, this has been fun, and I have learned a lot. I DO appreciate the time you have taken to respond, and I have gained a lot of insight into how you think, and have grown in my understanding of atheists and changes some of my misconceptions, and adjusted some of my understanding. Obviously, we are both guided by presuppositions and you require of me things that force me to lose before the game is even afoot, but I am on your turf, so that’s to be expected. I knew that coming in, and only hoped to correct some misconceptions, not convert or convince, that would be naive and foolish for sure. I would love to write a piece “Why I am not an atheist” and submit it to the site, if it would be welcome, and allow your critical keyboards to shred it, insults and all, and I think for this conversation, I might be better able to do it without insulting – though to some extent, that may be unavoidable, and I apologize in advance.
But the work week is upon me, and I must turn my attention back to that which puts food on the table.
Good week to you! It has been enlightening and enjoyable, and I hope you can say the same.
You jerks! LOL (there, I tried be mean, but you know I didn’t mean it, I’m just too nice a guy)
karl
You don’t take in a fucking word, do you, lackwit? Several people have pointed out that some of those arguing with you are women. Since you are unable to grasp such a simple point, it’s simply not credible that you have learned or even can learn anything at all.
Sorry fuckwit, we are guided by evidence and reason, not presupposition. You have the two presuppositional delusions that your imaginary deity exists, and your babble isn’t a book of mythology/fiction. You won’t get anywhere until you examine the lack of evidence for your presupositions, and think about why you can’t explain away the lack of evidence.
Philosophy without evidence is sophistry (mental masturbation). All Xian apologetics is sophistry. Your whole series of arguments was sophistry. Come back when you are ready to listen to reason and evidence.
What is he being here? I wanna say passive-aggressive but that’s prolly not it.
At any rate, dude, since you haven’t managed to present one solid reason for your continued disbelief in Nogod, I can’t imagine a “Why I Am Not An Atheist” post from you having anything whatsoever interesting to say.
Nice – you’re doing it wrong.
Feeble.
That’s for PZ to say – you know, with it being his blog and all – but you haven’t produced a single point we haven’t all heard a thousand times before.
Can we introduce Karl B to Ray Martinez?
Sorry ladies… I did miss that. There’s a lot here to read, but I love the over statements, nonetheless… since I miss one thing, I am therefore incapable of “learning anything” when in fact, I have learned quite a bit here, some of which is how unwilling you all are to learn or listen, but I have learned sincerely, and will include such lessons when I do some writing in my next publication.
Ironic that you will not grant me an inch of sincerity that I HERE to learn from you. Why would I keep coming back for such abuse, when convincing YOU is a futile, if I was not here to learn? There is no OTHER reason to be here, is there? Than to learn. I’m certainly not teaching you anything, you are completely closed.
Speaking of which, this is where you stupidity is at it’s highest degree!
Some of you say you are former Christians. So you would think that you would have some sort of compassion for a “lost” person such as I, being were you once were.
Are you not actually trying to convince me? Idiots. Are you not actually trying to convince this Christian that he is wrong? What complete imbeciles that you think insulting and ridiculing and cussing out someone actually will draw them to your side. It’s like trying to hold an intelligent conversation on a 3rd grade playground filled with college professors that haven’t had their chocolate milk yet. I feel like I’m trying to have an intelligent conversation with my 5 year old but he hasn’t had his nap yet.
I’d cuss at you, but it’s beneath me. I don’t see the need to, but as a father, it is really funny to have to explain to a lot of really REALLY super smart people (many of you smarter than me) something I had have to explain to a five year old, when I was shown to be wrong, and called a liar.
I’ll explain and I’ll use small words so that you’ll be sure to understand, you warthog faced buffoons, that being WRONG is not a LIE, you miserable, vomitous masses, a lie (for the 3rd time in this thread) is an intentional misstatement, of which I have not made one yet.
Hopefully, a few Princess Bride quotes slipped in has helped make the point, as well as lighten the conversation, since insults seem to be required in this thread.
And sorry ladies, again for leaving you out, but with the language and tone, I honestly didn’t think you were here!
Good night ladies and gentlemen!
*sob*
you big poopey meanies!
*sob*
chigau… dont flatter yourself. there is no sobbing here. LOL
no feelings hurt here. i think it is funny that when some folks here disagree, they have to resort to elementary school playground tactics since they can’t handle adult conversation. So Im poking fun at those who have to insult instead of maintaining a real adult conversation. its called satire.
as i have said, (which above some said they don’t believe) i have atheist friends who enjoy intellectual argument with me, as adults who respectfully disagree and are on an honest pursuit of truth and can discuss, even passionately, take punches, and try to see things from another direction/perspective without attacking the person…
living outside the bubble of ones own worldview… which is what I am doing by being here. which is more than some of you can say. im being more broadminded by listening and learning, and not attacking…
but i dont expect that type of maturity, at least i haven’t seen it in this thread, i HAVE seen it from other atheists… this has been a tough bunch…
lots of insecurity here.
You aren’t hear to learn, but to proselytize. Otherwise, atheism is simple. Your deity doesn’t exist because there is no conclusive physical evidence for it. That makes your holy book a volume of mythology/fiction, that impresses us not.
Morality has always been determined by humans, usually at the tribal level by consensus. No need for any imaginary deity, or holy book.
That is all that is needed to understand gnu atheists. You won’t learn anything more by posting sophistry, lies, and bullshit. You just need to lurk over the whole blog, not infest this thread.
Let me target you with your own logic for a moment, raven.
There are millions of people with dyslexia on the internet. It appears to me that you have difficulty following written arguments. Therefore, it is rational for me to declare that you probably have dyslexia.
Do you see how that is shit logic? There’s something missing in there, such that the conclusion is a non sequitur; dyslexia is rather more than appearing to have difficulty following written arguments.
Since your taxonomic skills are so lacking, here, let me give you an example of something that can unambiguously contribute to a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
http://www.schizophrenia.com:8080/jiveforums/thread.jspa?threadID=48053
The next time you’re tempted to run your stupid mouth, stop! and consider, “is this as unambiguous as that link?” If not, then just let it go. You are simply not qualified to make any more nuanced judgments.
Try not to project for a second. Unlike you, we don’t really have the need to “convert” as many people as possible to please some powerful authority. Most of us would be fine with theists simply not discriminating against us or pestering us with their myths or trying to get said myths enshrined in the law of the land. At any rate, and if you’d like to continue with the “lost” narrative, we’d be more compassionate if you were genuinely seeking knowledge about the skeptical and scientific worldview, or if you were disillusioned with your faith, rather than coming and here and saying “Gee whiz, it sure is a shame that the guy who wrote this blog post is an amoral hedonist who doesn’t see the wonderful power of God in every floating dandelion seed!”
Oh give me a fucking break. There’s been plenty of mature and thoughtful objections to your comments here, you just choose to ignore them in favor of pissing and moaning about the insults you find scattered therein.
We’re at least giving you food for thought. And educate anyone else who might happen to be lurking on this thread. It’s not always about changing the mind of the one person you’re addressing, and the whole “flies with honey” thing isn’t a universal truth. Women and racial minorities didn’t get civil rights by playing nice.
Piss up a rope.
No, we know you are a complete shit-for-brains, semi-literate, and too mired in misogynist prejudice to realise that most women are far more capable of rational argument than you are. We are primarily addressing the very considerable audience of lurkers; and if you had any familiarity with this blog, you would know that we get quite frequent testimonials that our robust style has brought about liberations from religious belief.
By the way, you are only too typical of the religious believers we get here (who, I must say, are not typical of religious believers in general), both in your stupidity and in your dishonesty. One more example of the latter: you have said several times that you are not going to comment again, then you turn up again to whine and moan some more. You have nothing original to say, are incapable of rational argument, and give the impression of being a thoroughly unpleasant individual.
Only in your delusional mind, full of hope you can convert the heathens. Won’t work. Either you have the conclusive physical evidence for your imaginary deity or you don’t. If you don’t, you have nothing of interest for us. If you did have it, you would have lead with it. That leaves you in the land of can’t put up, but can’t shut up. Guess who resides there? Not truth tellers, who can put up, but TRUTH tellers, also known as proselytizers.
More dishonesty from Karl shit-for-brains. In the very same comment we have:
followed shortly by:
Why not at least try putting the insults and the claims that you don’t attack in different comments?
And then playing with that distinctive bit of filename should offer other sources, like gopodder, which seems to be pretty extensive.
I’ll dare to try two links. This one’s good: https://gpodder.net/podcast/msnbc-rachel-maddow-video
sorry! wrong thread!
ahs ॐ
It made as much sense as anything Karl B has been saying.
*sigh* considering that you’re STILL addressing everyone as if they were all male tells me that you haven’t learned even the most basic things from this conversation.
there you are again, not having learned anything. You’re the one with all the presuppositions. The scientific method only has one: that reality is at least somewhat knowable.
*shrug* reality doesn’t have just a liberal bias, it apparently also has an atheist one. you not liking it because it makes you “lose” (“lose” what? how is gaining a better understanding of reality “losing”? this is not a competition and knowledge is not a zero-sum game)
Mr. Nerd of Redhead says, “You aren’t hear to learn, but to proselytize. Otherwise, atheism is simple. Your deity doesn’t exist because there is no conclusive physical evidence for it.”
You are requiring physical evidence for a non-physical entity… that is an unfair requirement. There is non-physical evidence all around. It is philosophical and logical evidence, which those who limit themselves to the physical are unable to see because they disqualify the non-physical evidence for a non-physical entity. That’s the absurdity of the debate here.
Rey Fox, re: “There’s been plenty of mature and thoughtful objections to your comments here, you just choose to ignore them in favor of pissing and moaning about the insults you find scattered therein.”
Yes, agreed. I was only addressing the morons in our midst. I have also complimented and thanked the more thoughtful among us many times in this thread, some by name and said I have learned from them, and my insults have all been either in jest or unintentional, never mean-spirited, unlike those routinely tossed my way, though I take them without injury for I understand I am “despised” here, at least by most, just for being/believing who I am, which I would think an honest true atheist, would not do, if he were truly above the judgement and look-down-his-nose attitude of the Christians he despises, instead, some appear to have left on type of snobbery for another.
I am only offering that there IS a Christianity that isn’t, if one was willing to see it. I understand those are not here, and I am OK with that. But to paint me as someone I am not, is as unfair as it would be for me to paint you all as someone you are not. I have not once said you are lying to me, even when I think you to be wrong.
I can be called “shit-for-brains” and when I call that what it is, you say I am insulting you. I have only mirrored you back upon yourself. I have yet to insult anyone other than to declare the tone childish. I understand my positions are insulting to some, but that is different than an outright insult.
One says I’m an unpleasant individual, which is an unfortunate aspect of text, for you can not see tone in text. I’ve bent over backwards to be humorous at times, apologizing when I was told I insulted, and often tried to clarify when misunderstood. Something never once done or even attempted in the other direction. I’m not whining or moaning (though some seem to want to call it that or see it that way) only pointing out the obvious. I’ve actually been extremely respectful of those I disagree with.
As for saying I would no longer comment, when I offered that, it was made clear I was welcome to continue to comment, so I continued, especially when I felt I was being misrepresented, to clarify. Plus, I think you all are enjoying a new punching bag. I won’t be a regular on the site, and you’ll all soon miss having me to ridicule and smack around, (I’m not saying you’ll miss me, you can skip those comments to the contrary! I’ll spare you that joy) I won’t “troll” this blog and bother you further after this conversation concludes… not sure if I’ve pushed this further than most posts go, if so, I’m sorry.
You can keep telling yourselves I was here to proselytize, as that is your mindset toward my “type” but I will leave here richer for having learned more – as I have learned better how to interact (and how NOT to) with more harsher atheists, and some of my godless friends (I say that respectfully of them) have congratulated me for coming back for some much abuse and remaining as respectful and levelheaded as I have in spite of your treatment of me, another human, who has never done anything to you, other than to disagree.
Now, Rey Fox, I’m going to go find a rope and try pissing up it. Not sure what that means, but it sounds like a challenge. Pissing down it might be easier. Or maybe I’ll just lay it on the ground and piss along it. And while I’m at it, I’ll wonder, which came first, the piss or the rope?
(Can you guys & gals ever share a joke with someone you disagree with? come on already?! my atheist friends are so ashamed of you all! you’ve got to learn to argue with class and with a sense of humor and fun and good nature, after all, if you are right, its lights out for us all – all too soon.)
chill’ out, and have a beer on me.
karl b
Anyone making book on this flounce?
Poor Karl B, still jabbering.
Why? It’s supposed to have interacted with the physical world, right? I don’t know how a “non-physical entity” is supposed to work; but it doesn’t matter. Here in the real world, interacting with stuff has observable effects. You can’t simply wave that problem away. So has a god ever interacted with the physical world?
All around, eh? What arguments are you talking about? I could just as easily claim there is logical proof of the Easter bunny without actually giving the argument, but I wouldn’t expect you to believe me. If it’s all around and you know what it is, then you just have to provide a single fucking proof. Don’t just flail about, claiming it’s “all around,” and move on to other irrelevant nonsense. One proof. That’s it.
Unless you make them come here, I don’t believe a word about your mysterious atheist friends..
That is mental masturbation, not evidence. Evidence is solid and physical. Mental masturbation is bullshit arguments with enough vague words inconsistently used to confuse folks. Ergo, it is worthless, like all apologetics, for figuring out the existence of a deity due to presuppositions.
Your deity of the babble interacted with the world. If you think otherwise, you are as good as acknowledging the babble is bullshit; mythology/fiction, and nothing else. Your imaginary Yahweh must be physical. Otherwise, what you are left with is a non-interacting deist god, which isn’t the one of the babble. But rather something that can’t be proven or disproven, and can be rightly and logically ignored. Not getting anywhere when exposed to real logic, are you?
Why do you persist in lying and bullshitting? You are proselytizing again. Which is why I said if you really wanted to learn about atheist, shut the fuck up and just listen.
one more piece of evidence that you haven’t learned anything. let me repeat myself: if it has effects in the physical world, it is detectable; if it doesn’t have effects in this world, it’s synonymous with non-existent (and also not the Christian god, since that one is claimed to have effects on the physical world)
what the everglorious fuck is “non-physical evidence”?
yeah, no, such things don’t actually exist. there is philosophical and logical argument, and there’s logical proof, but there’s no such concept as philosophical and logical evidence.
Not that it matters, since the christian god is actually logically impossible, so if there were such things as “logical evidence”, it would be against your god.
but that’s not relevant. no matter how nice such a religion might be, it would still be factually wrong.
you’re still behaving as if this were a matter of opinion. The problem is not that we disagree; the problem is that you’re virulently ignorant of the things you reject and project that ignorance on us. That’s extremely annoying and frustrating.
why precisely would we care about what your friends think of any of us?
don’t lecture us on how to behave in our own spaces. also, you really need to learn that dismissing and argument because of the tone is a form of silencing against minorities. “why are you so angry” has always been a means to shut down the rightful feelings of those who are treated like shit and maligned, and to stifle social progress. Don’t try this on us, it won’t work.
Who have I treated like excrement? no one. There is only one person being treated like it in this thread, though he isn’t complaining about it.
Thank you, Jadehawk, for finally saying exactly what I feel: “The problem is not that we disagree; the problem is that you’re virulently ignorant of the things you reject and project that ignorance on us. That’s extremely annoying and frustrating.”
I conclude with that exact same statement in return: “The problem is not that we disagree; the problem is that you’re virulently ignorant of the things you reject and project that ignorance on ME. That’s extremely annoying and frustrating.”
You (a general you) respond by heaping insults on me, unfair test requirements, taking my words out of context, baiting me, setting up straw man arguments, and stating unsubstantiated opinion as fact, and calling anything I say a lie or bull-poop merely for being an opposing position.
I have responded by attempting to answer you with honesty, clarity, explanation, and even light-hearted humor for the purpose of gaining understanding of the “other side.”
You (appear) to only want to despise and hate those who disagree. I on the other hand seek understanding and knowledge and to answer you.
My answers, understandably, are unacceptable to you.
I am still thankful for your time, even though you have attempted to beat me down, I am better off for the time, while you seem to be right where I found you. Though maybe cockier, I don’t know.
That’s a bummer. We should be able to learn from each other, even if we come no closer to each other.
And as for learning by “shutting the F up and just listening” – that is the essence of arrogance. Learning is a two way street. We ask, we listen, we respond, we dialogue. That is how learning happening between genuine learners.
The day we shut up, we stop learning.
Does that arrogant attitude represent all of you? please tell me he is the exception here, folks. He sure makes atheists sound condescending.
But unless someone says otherwise, I will shut up now and let you all just stroke each other now and just read.
I’ve said my piece, and again
THANK YOU, it has been fun and I have appreciated the time and your TIME and contributions.
Sure would be cool to see just one of you say a kind word to a fellow human being on the road to truth.
We dont have to agree to be agreeable, you know.
Trying one last time to elicit a respectable post from someone who isn’t just spewing.
Good evening.
Nothing you’ve said so far has been funny.
I think what you’re really trying to ask is “could someone please pretend to share a laugh with me, to help me regulate my stress?”
If you ask this latter question more forthrightly, you might find someone generous enough to feel sorry for you (but maybe not; I make no guarantees).
But if that’s what you want, then you’re largely frustrating your own efforts. Your bravado consists of numerous (probably defensive) threat displays, which might force a grimace or nervous laughter from a captive audience offline, but which are mostly annoying and a little bit sad online.
By “he” did you mean Jadehawk?
and stop saying good-bye if you are not leaving.
You are ruining my betting.
“The invisible and the inexistent look very similar.”
Show me.
Were not postmodernists. There is no “to you”; either your conclusions follow from the evidence, or they don’t.
You make it sound like you know exactly a smuch as all of us together…
But don’t shut up. Unless, that is, you can’t reply to our points. Feel free to add a heap of insults or jokes or whatever to your replies – we don’t care.
ROTFLMAO
you don’t actually know what it is that you’ve just repeated, have you. plus, you’re demonstrably wrong, so I can easily dismiss your claims of atheist projection.
REALITY IS NOT A MATTER OF OPINION
if that was your goal, you’ve failed. I can’t speak for honesty per-se, but you’ve shown a very distinct lack of intellectual honesty despite your claims to the contrary; you have failed at clarity, since you haven’t said anything concrete enough; and you’ve certainly not explained anything, bur rather used stale apologetics that have been long-refuted. And most importantly, you’ve brought nothing new to the conversation, while showering us with ignorance of the science you erroneously claim to agree with.
see, considering that this has been explained to you several times now, I’m really left with the conclusion that you don’t care whether what you say is true. That’s generally known as bullshitting. But I’ll try one more time: it’s not that we disagree, it’s that you’re willfully ignorant of basic facts of science and evidently proud of it, while accusing atheists of the same; that’s both projection and hypocrisy.
Willful ignorance and hypocrisy are things that piss us off; but we don’t hate Christians. At most, we’re frustrated and contemptuous, but usually it’s annoyance.
well yes, but that’s because they’re factually incorrect, full of logical fallacies, and stale; not because we don’t “want” god or because we “hate” christians and christianity, as you keep on falsely claiming.
because you were demonstrably wrong on everything you said pretty much; plus the willful ignorance, the logical fallacies, the factual errors. what did you expect?
I don’t know how many times I have to repeat this, but you’ve said nothing that was new. Everything you said was factually incorrect, irrelevant and well-known, a logical fallacy, or a long-refuted bit of stale apologetics. There was nothing there to learn from.
among equals it is. I’m sorry if this is offensive to you, but christian apologetics vs. the scientific method is not a conversation between equals. One is wishful thinking, the other is a tool that has shown itself reliable in uncovering reality over and over again.
I have never seen such a succinct summary of privilege.
“respectable” by whose definition? it’s not like any of your posts have shown any respect for the value of truth and reality, for example. You have over and over demonstrated that you don’t care about truth and reality, and prefer that which you wish to be true. And then you go on and tell us that this is what we do. That’s not respect.
oh boy, Karl – you stuck it out a lot longer than i thought you would, but have mercy on yourself and quit while you are losing friend. you are on the wrong side of the tracks here buddy.
yeah. im one of his “atheist friends” – he’s stretching it a bit to say im “ashamed” of you all, but i will say you’ve acted like a bunch of asses for sure. im not going to defend his arguments, im not a christian, but i do appreciate his candor and he’s a heck of a lot more articulate than many of you without pissing below the belt. Hell, he quoted Princess Bride and you couldn’t even appreciate that! He and I are both star wars fans and have a lot in common – including the fact that we go at it arguing theology, and evolution and creation and politics (be glad he didn’t bring THAT up!) but after we calm down, we pop in a DVD and enjoy the flick.
That’s what it means to be American, and one correction, and area I almost agree with my friend, that’s what it means to be a Christian Nation where all religions and non-religions are welcome. It was Christians who first made that possible, when they left England. (but I do not agree with how far Christians try to push that… so don’t go slammin’ me, I with you 95% on that, and let’s not go derailing this thread, I’m not trying to get it off topic.)
I’m mostly trying to convince karl enough is enough already and to leave you all alone before one of you breaks a blood vessel over his ceaseless rambblings. He can take a beating a lot longer than the lot of you combined it seems. He’s Kung-fu Panda who just won’t give up when you are trying to get him to go away. He can’t really take a hint, apparently.
So I’m trying to convince him he’s really not wanted here.
This isn’t a place for open-minded atheists who can handle high-spirited conversations in a civil manner and then shake hands at the end and then change subjects and enjoy what we have in common as fellow Americans… they are too wounded for that. I’ve gotten over my wounds and don’t blame every christian i meet for the shit a few put me through. i pissed on them on a long time ago, and now i let ever new one I meet make their own bed before I decide how I’m going to treat them. This guy has earned my respect by playing fair, arguing intelligently (when given the chance) and then turning around and being an OK guy.
Let’s get out of here friend. you’ve had enough.
Karl B, you mentioned “philosophical and logical evidence.” Were you planning on getting to that someday?
It’s awfully rude to not even acknowledge my rather simple request for a single shred of logic which is “evidence” of a god. Of course, I think the exchange would be more productive if you responded to the first part, challenging your claim that it’s unfair to require physical evidence. But then I took your claim at face value — that there is “non-physical evidence” for a god — and you didn’t offer it. Instead, you continued to rail against people for being rude and not addressing your claims. Odd, since that’s exactly what I was doing. The only thing making your bullshit somewhat less boring and irrelevant is that I have a hard time understanding how you manage to do it. It’s sort of like staring at a train wreck, I guess, but a very boring and irrelevant one. So keep it up. I don’t think I’ve learned much about the godbot mentality yet, but there is still time.
interesting that you combine these things as if they were all equally contentious issues, and equally things on which one might “agree to disagree”
what do I care about what it means to be American? I have two citizenships, and neither is for the USA.
Also, if this delusion that matters of fact are up for dispute is “what it means to be American”, it’s no surprise at all that you’re quickly becoming the intellectual backwater of the Western world.
so you’re as ignorant about the history of your own country as your creationist friend. that’s not something to brag about, you know.
this isn’t a place for people so “openminded” they will accept anything and everything as a valid opinion. It’s a skeptical community.
what high-spirit
assumptions, assumptions…
more assumptions. I carry no “wounds”, I simply think Christianity is factually incorrect and I find value in truth.
you set the bar for intelligent argument very low, I see. Logical fallacies and factual errors do not qualify for intelligent anything in my book.
I think he might be referring to himself…
the problem with America:
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”
― Isaac Asimov
Ha!
You know, I used to be capable of a performance like Karl’s. It’s been over a decade but I feel like I could do a fair imitation, with enough weed and coffee.
Tell you what, Karl: I’ll give you a menu of options. You can just point to any one of these proofs as the most convincing one for your particular deity. Just type the number or something, and we’ll be able to figure it out. That way you don’t actually have to do any work yourself. If you want, you could of course dress it up or alter it however you like, but that’s up to you.
Anyway, here are three, just to get you started:
seriously?
empirical1
Karl
do you expect ANYONE to buy this?????
Fuck, this is perfect.
It’s the Bible condensed to a slow vibration. There’s no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.
chigau,
I think empirical1 sounds like a sufficiently different style of writing, so I don’t think they’re a sockpuppet.
But they seem to be as ignorant about this place as Karl, this is a gnu atheist blog, with a decidedly anti-accommodationist bent. Also, this is a blog with a worldwide audience, so enough already with the “fellow Americans”.
Jadehawk, what do you expect from a russian jewish immigrant born in the USSR? Isaac Asimov could never had been a true american, he was too much of an elitist.
(Just make sure you have read that in a heavy handed sarcastic tone.)
Consciousness razor, you have answered in your second post why I did not bother to answer your first post. There is no reason to.
The killer is… I have experienced supernatural evidence, but it is personal. Many have prayed, “God if you are real, I need proof,” and God has answered that prayer. Supernaturally, outside of the physical laws of nature.
Imagine, sincerely, (if you can) what would happen IF (if!) God were to be “proven” exactly how you demand him to be! What would the ramifications of that be… follow that train of thought… where would free will be? Where would genuine relationship with God be? It would not, could not exist. For we would all be subjects of a God we could NOT deny for he could be proven and we would all be under his power and control… sigh. There are REASONS he is not provable… philosophical and logical reasons for those willing to listen and understand. But the closed mind will not and can not understand for they refuse to understand for they push out, shut down and shout down anyone who tries to reason with them…
(sorry empirical1, i know, i know… stupid of me to even try, we’ve been down this road, and I know YOU get it, even though you dont agree, you get it at least philosophically, because YOU at least have listened and get it that there are philosophical pathways to an existence of God, and God CAN and DOES step into the physical, but He does so on HIS terms when HE wants to and not because some jerk on a blog demands it, he is GOD after all and not at the mercy of some smuck who demands HE cater to Him. But if anyone here sincerely seeks Him, you WILL find him, that promise is throughout Scripture.)
By the way, I love:
http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm
Even a Christian can enjoy satire, we aren’t above a good laugh, even at our expense!
Thanks for that link. That was worth coming back to find! I’ll be sharing that link on my website. That made me laugh. Thanks.
After the latest post I’m not so sure anymore, I now tend towards the sockpuppet hypothesis.
As I’ve said to various theists and deists before,
What happens inside your head, is NOT outside of the physical laws of nature…
pelamun
I disagree.
I think the “tone” and style and especially content is all Karl.
Is there really an American atheist who would characterize the USA as a “Christian Nation”?
Um, wait, so Karl B’s talking to himself now?
Karl! get off my computer! i told you to quit already. dont me posting in my name.
Cross-posting is annoying.
I rest my case.
Not only sock-puppeting but clumsy, no-preview sockpuppeting.
Crap, you caught me! you shoudn’t stay logged in when you leave the room! haha, now they are going to have a hayday with your post buddy!
OK, OK, I’ll quit and let them talk among themselves without me tossing fuel on the fire any more. I’m telling you, they are gonna miss me soon. (not really)
well chigau,
for the first post I was still making allowances for an ignorant atheist.. But the second post made me reconsider my position..
This is silly and obviously flawed.
If your Yahweh was demonstrated to exist, I would not be bound to worship him.
I would join the armies of Hell to make war against him.
“Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven”, and no Christian should be making this argument after the publication of Paradise Lost.
You are not even wrong. People did not come to the North American colonies in order to set up religious freedoms for others. They came to set up their own religious orders. People were executed for not being a part of the colonies’ official sect. Any religious freedom that was given in the founding of the United States was from knowing the history of religious violence in the colonies of the past two centuries as well as knowledge of of the history of christian Europe. And they were not just from England. There were Dutch, Germans, Irish, Scots, French and others. Religious freedoms did not spring from christian philosophy, it was in reaction to christian violence.
Yeah, Im your “sock puppet” now karl, thanks A LOT. wait until that gets around.
I’ll tell you where you can stick the sock puppet guys.
what was the commericial with the sock puppet?
Fandango?
No, no, those were bags… it was a sock puppet and a microphone… doing interviews…
you watch too much TV
i think it was a dog…
I’ll google it..
ahs ॐ
Sign me up.
ok, now you ARE trolling; so much for honesty, clarity, and respect, you little Liar for Jebus. Also, sockpuppeting is a banning offense, just FYI
anyway, for my own amusement:
brainfarts are only evidence for brains and brain-malfunctions. I should note that plenty of atheists have had such experiences, both before and after deconversion, and scientists have been able to replicate some of them in the lab. they’re not evidence of god.
there you are again, being insulting and projecting like crazy
in exactly the same place it is now
you think “if you don’t know, I won’t tell you” is a genuine relationship? O.o
wut? no. subservience to god does not automatically follow from the existence of god. euthyphyro dilemma, look it up someday.
how so? mind control does not automatically follow from known existence.
and this is simply a blatant lie meant to comfort you in your own state of willful ignorance; also, projection again.
so much for your lie about you not being here to proselytize, eh?
I beat you, it was pets.com
here: http://tinyurl.com/6mzxhxy
Karl B, you think too highly of yourself. The blog has been going on for years with out your input (highly unoriginal as they are) and will go on when you are just an other unpleasant bad memory.
Oh, yeah. Obviously, that dog had no intelligent design
OK, well, we agree there! LOL But it did have the Hand of a Master controlling it! It couldn’t just have life without some kind of outside influence bringing it to life.
Good one. But then, that “God” was giving it to the dog up the ass!
OK, let’s not tick off the atheists here by getting off topic and using a sock puppet to argue whether a dog has an intelligent design or not…
It’s the evolution of the sock… it went from a smelly mass to a talking creature!
if that god turned out to be that petulant, psychopathic man-child in the OT, yeah, me too.
otherwise, I’d just not bother. A deist god wouldn’t bother anyone, and neither would a good number of other deities. Some of them aren’t even too bad. Probably wouldn’t go so far as to “worship”, especially since I’m so not going to sacrifice any of my pets to any gods, but most gods would be sort of inconsequential to my life. not worth the effort fighting
True! OK, before the shoe drops, I’ll wrap this up, but THEY brought up the sock puppet, not me.
But I do see some intelligent design there, someone had to make that puppet and bring it to life…
drop it, haven’t you been beat up enough here?
they are gonna turn on me next and I dont even LIKE you.
LOL
And here is yet an other chattering godbot being overly impressed by his comparing an organism to a hand puppet.
Your deity is good for me…to poop on.
Hey karl, i think you made a little progress here, did you see some of them now believe in the armies of hell? way to go!
There is hope after all!
They are a third rate comedy duo.
This is just sad.
Karl, you were already ignorable, but sockpuppeting is enough to warrant the use of my killfile, if PZ doesn’t decide to ban you. This will be my last response to you or your imaginary friends.
This isn’t reasoning. You are simply saying one confused thing after another. Anyway, I don’t believe in free will either, so its nonexistence isn’t a problem, and either way, it wouldn’t help the case for god one bit.
As far as having a genuine relationship, I don’t know why that couldn’t be possible. How do you know? Can you have genuine relationships with real people who interact with the world, and whose existence is ascertainable by physical evidence? Assuming for the sake of argument a god could exist, why would it be incapable of having that sort of relationship? Can you deny that I exist? Sure, I suppose so, but why would it be necessary for a god to demand faith in it based on no evidence whatsoever? It sounds like this is necessary for you to continue your nonsensical line of argument without needing a shred of evidence, not something necessary for a god. And how the fuck do you know any of this? Scripture???
Bah. Killfile. I knew it was a waste of time.
I see you do nor believe in reading comprehension. That is not what was said. If there is a god, it would be better to be in the armies of hell.
But you are not here for an honest conversation.
Janine – I said “(not really)” you all are intent on making a caricature of me that is so far from reality, that its unfortunate. if we met in person, i fear I’d disappoint you, we might actually get along.
Karl, give up. you’ll never convince them of that here, all they see your words, which piss em off. ive met you in person, so i know you, beyond the stereotypes. they have their blinders on. i could tell them things that would help, but im protecting your identity. they’d be blown away to know you are, but let’s leave it at that. dang i want to blow your cover.
shut up
You presume too much.
no worries. just saying its hard.
thats what aliases are for. ok, back to the movie moron.
He must be jerking-off with his foot.
actually, I take “man-child” back. I generally abstain from such ageisms, the reason I used it here is because in Genesis (well, the J and E texts, anyway), he IS a child; then sometime around Exodus he turns into an obnoxious frat-boy.
I suppose, by extension that means Jesus was his midlife crisis, and now him only being able to appear on toast and give christians brainfarts would mean he’s gone senile and is living in the nursing home for elderly gods
:-p
To quote Obi-Wan Kenobi:
“You have done that yourself!”
Dumb And Dumber?
*immature giggle*
I have to say this is one of the more entertaining godbot meltdowns
Alex Proyas is directing Paradise Lost, starring Bradley Cooper as Satan, to be released in 2013.
Well you could be Superman, Barack Obama or whoever, based on your performance in this thread, we’d still think you’re an idiot..
that could be fun, maybe…
If they’re as tedious and insufferable as you are, then I couldn’t care less about their disapproval.
Why bother? We’ve already got you beat with logic and facts, beating you with class and humor would just be piling on.
Guess I was right.
Yes, and I’ll bet you both carved your initials in a tree in a little heart with “BFF” next to it. Well, we’re not your buddies, and we don’t have to spare your feelings, so quit making this out to be a group hug.
*sigh* It was some Christians of various sects, and some Deists, who agreed that it was best that they keep their religion out of the business of governing actual people.
Funny, from my scorecard, we’re way ahead.
Oh, and we’re also winning 1-0 in the “Cause A Mental Breakdown” tally. (Okay, maybe I’ll give you a point for raven, but that’s an easy job.)
I see we have another troll who worships Samael.
Janine – Respectfully, I gave up on the “honest conversation,” though I have been honest all along.
After attempting it for over 100 posts and getting nothing but insults and name calling. What I said above, was just a joke, but no one here seems capable of light hearted humor. It has become obvious no one here wants honest conversation. I can either agree or be ridiculed and called a liar and bullshitter, just for disagreeing because I cannot provide physical proof for God. (if it were available, it would not be I in 2011 that would be providing it here on a blog.) So God is rejected here and anyone who accepts him for any reason. I get that. Rejected with hostility as well.
karl! stop engaging them!
ahs ॐ
Pardise Lost.
wow.
I’m stock-piling popcorn.
sorry, i have this vain hope of someone talking to me in a civil manner. ok, ill give up. just keep thinking this can end like our conversations do. guess not.
Karl,
you are really obstinate and obtuse. It was explained to you that here, substance matters more than tone. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. No-one is gonna adhere to your standard of civility because of your whining.
Stick the flounce already..
Liar For Jebus
Hmm, looks like I left out one of my responses to one of my blockquoted paragraphs. I was going to say that Karl’s attempts at humor sucked, but I guess it’s pretty pointless now that him and his buddy are going on like a pair of gas huffers.
initials on a tree in a heart with BFF, now THAT is funny. sad little people on this site who cant understand people getting along who aren’t perfectly the same… wow, ive been thrown to the lions with you… this is crazy.
Congratulations! You are now a martyr for your faith!
As for hostility, come back to me when you have a group of people call you an abomination and should be killed. But I guess I was lucky, it was just a bunch of people who wanted to yell at a dyke.
well anyway, so much for my attempt to be civil wit the little lying turd. one more datapoint that the idiots don’t really care about tone, since they pretend that the people who addressed them calmly and with detailed reasoning (and even a scientific paper, though admittedly I didn’t cite it) either didn’t exist or weren’t being calm civil and reasonable. they only care that they can use tone to weasel out of a conversation they couldn’t gain an upper hand in
sorry dude, sucks to be attacked by atheists when you ARE one! ill go scratch the tree out. LOL
Lying is a Sin.
Just because one is an atheist does not mean that one is not an idiot. Your friend friend is not the first atheist to be made fun of here. There is even a word for people like your friend, faitheist.
Who do these two remind me of?
Go forth and die!
You want to be a martyr, we’re happy to oblige. There’s an empty cross for you right next to your buddy. Just grit your teeth and try not to thrash, please.
Now where’s my hammer?
“So God is rejected here and anyone who accepts him for any reason. I get that. Rejected with hostility as well.”
Those who accept it for any reason are not rejected; it depends on the reason. I suppose accepting Jesus as your personal savior because a maniac demands it lest they kill an innocent is justifiable. in fact, as long as you are willing to tolerate a fairly rational notion that believing in a super guy in the sky with no evidence is a fair target for criticism and even ridicule, you can stay. Were I to inform others of my belief that Talking ducks rule the galaxy, i better at least get a talking duck first (I can work on galactic domination proof later). Otherwise it shouldn’t come as a surprise that people will think I’m certifiable.
Janine, in all sincerity. I am sorry that happened to you. If it was Christians, then I am especially sorry and apologize on their behalf. I do not agree with that kind of abhorrent behavior and would not have participated myself nor stood by and watched it happen. I 100% rebuke that behavior and deplore of it and would have stood between you and them to prevent it were I there. These are not idle words, I have defended at personal risk and physical harm such behavior in the past and spoken out against the ways Christians have been unloving toward homosexuals.
While we may not agree with the what the Bible teaches on the topic and that will always result in some tension we can’t avoid, that is NEVER a reason or justification to act in an unloving or unkind way toward someone we disagree with. (as has been my constant theme in this very thread) I believe my treatment in this thread is a direct result of how many Christians have treated atheists, gays and others… so that is why I’ve taken it as one who deserved it, though I do not think I PERSONALLY deserve it, I DO think Christians as a whole have brought it on ourselves. Not for our beliefs, but for how we have treated those WE disagree with at times…
apparently you have experienced that.
i believe behind every atheist who is a former Christian there is a story. and when i hear that story, i discover something that can be, and needs to be, apologized for.
if i can exit this thread having apologized to you for that event you experienced, ill feel like being here was worth the little abuse i got, i know from your sarcasm it was nothing compared to what you wen through.
that breaks my heart.
it was wrong.
and while you don’t believe.
It breaks God’s heart too… and He cares.
for what its worth.
im sorry.
sincerely.
specimen1:
No atheist writes such shit.
(Bah)
you’d be wrong. your “treatment” is directly caused by your wilful ignorance, hypocrisy, condescension, and now the blatant sockpuppeting. There are respectable Christians out there (we’ve rewarded two of them with a commenters’ choice award called “the order of the molly”), but you aren’t one of them.
but I already know that you ignore everything I say to you because you prefer to complain about tone, so you will either ignore or quickly forget about it this time as well.
alrighty then: apologize for spreading falsehoods such as “there is a god”.
because that’s all the story there is in my case: i looked at the evidence and found it wanting, and ended up an atheist
karl
you are disgusting
karl, thats why i like you. i may not believe in God, but i do believe that “he” is what compels you to care about people so much, and i respect that. and that you choose to carry some responsibility for the wrongs of other christians when you haven’t done any of the shit they have, is pretty cool. thats why i listen to you when you write and talk about it, because i know you think it all through and genuinely want to understand my reasons for rejecting it all. you are after the truth and understanding where i am coming from and why i cant get to where you are.
brace yourself, they can’t accept your apology. they are going throw it right back in your face. they can’t let you be noble. they think that will earn you some credibility and they can’t allow that. but i appreciate it, its helped me get over my anger.
specimen0:
What it’s worth is a snicker.
<snicker>
There there, I’m sure you and your imaginary friend there will be all right!
for what its worth.
I can’t speak for Janine, but smarmy, self-congratulatory, dreck is worth less than nothing. A retch or two at most.
I did not ask you to apologize for the actions of others.
Also, I was an atheist long before I knew I was queer.
Also, telling me that god cares means nothing to me. And I will not grant you respect just because you use your god to back up why you should be a decent person.
No John, I wrote that, I was on Alex’s computer (empirical1) which was explained a few posts down. sorry for the confusion.
Faitheist.
wow, you have a really low opinion of karl. do you really think if he weren’t compelled by an imaginary authority he believes in, he’d not care about people?
I only thought religionists could be such misanthropes, but i guess you believe in plato’s Noble Lie, eh?
wow, really? you believe in guilt by association? what the fuck is wrong with you?
*groan*
yep, all atheists secretly want to be christians. what a pathetic strawsock
dude, he can’t apologize for what others have done. that doesn’t even make sense.
no. you see, only the authoritarian mind finds that personal character traits are what makes something credible or not. the skeptical mind doesn’t care for the personaity behind the arguments and takes the arguments on its own value. and yours were pretty worthless; they were not credible because they were fallacious, counterfactual, and ignorant, and they would still be all that even if you/karl were the nicest, noblest person in the universe. they’d still be fallacious, counterfactual, and ignorant even if you were jesus christ himself.
[meta]
So, specimen0 has its version of Drop Dead Fred, and specimen1 thinks that’s admirable.
(Such absurdity!)
I was raised christian, but it never made sense. The holy book was full of myths from other cultures, silly rules, and lots of killing in gods name. So I never bothered to actually believe it, any more than I believed in my book of greek mythology. (Even though those gods were much cooler)
No trauma, unless you count the book of children’s bible stories with beautiful dreamy pictures of Cain killing Abel, mass drowning, and the slaughter of innocents. The lovely tale of the father who planned to sacrificially slaughter his son was a bit disturbing too.
I was a christian as a child, but I matured.
That was one of the main reasons why I left my faith behind. A parent willing (if reluctant) to murder their child just because a deity said so. It is a system that values obedience over family.
have you ever read the verses right after the moment god supposedly changes his mind? here’s how they read:
note that Abe comes home alone, and then takes his men to Beersheba. The son is strangely not mentioned for the rest of this chapter. what do you wanna bet the original version had Abe commit human sacrifice?
editing fail
I was disturbed by the concept of a god who sent an angel with a sword to slaughter innocent babies.
A just and loving god would keep its own commandments.
Jadehawk
I’ve never noticed that little detail.
for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son
It seems to be exactly what this verse states. That Abe is blessed because he murdered his son for god the homicidal voice in his head.
It’s good that we have medications for that now.
Tethys, Yahweh was not purported to be a “just and loving god” (quite the opposite!), this claim relies on bland assertions in the NT.
God and Satan having a barroom bet over the devotion of one human is not a story of a just and loving god. I wonder if Job’s dead children were mollified by their father’s continued devotion. I wonder if Job’s wife happy to have even more pregnancies in order to make up for the dead ones?
John
Thus the fact that I couldn’t believe that it could possibly be true. It sounded just as
factualinsane as Zeus killing all his siblings, and turning himself into various animals to commit rape and adultery. Or jesus dying and coming back to life.I can’t find any sense in worshiping a murdering liar, especially one who threatens to torture for eternity if you don’t believe in him.
that entire part of Genesis is weird (well, a different kind of weird than usual, anyway). at the end of Gen 22, there’s a short list of children of Abe’s brother, and one grandchild is mentioned: not Laban, the son of Bethuel, son of Nahor, Abraham’s brother; no, it’s Rebekah that get’s mentioned as the only notable grandchild of Abe’s brother. And then Gen 24 is all about Rebekah again, and then when she spawns, it’s her favorite spawn that ends up with god’s blessing and the family inheritance, not the firstborn who was her husband’s favorite.
i thought the first wife died as part of the bet, too, and he gets a new one to bear him a replacement family? or am i remembering this wrong?
I wonder how many true christians are aware that there are a lot of other bible stories that were removed by church decree?
Judith doesn’t make the bible at all.
Jepthah’s daughter was also given as a human sacrifice: Judges 11 20:39. Edited for brevity:
As an ethno-cultural Jew, the only way to retain Judiasm as an ethnic identity was to treat the holidays as traditional dinners to get together with family and good friends and eat drink and be merry – only possible upon a realization that NONE OF THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED. Otherwise, what kind of callous asshole eats and drinks in celebration of god’s slaughter of innocent kids. One would think that simply killing the Pharaoh would have been simpler and less monstrous. Now I can actually enjoy myself with what truly matters, good food, good drinks, and good company. And no, god doesn’t count as good company.
Funny how Karl B expects us to be open minded about his imaginary deity, but will not open his mind to the idea is imaginary (unevidenced) deity doesn’t exist. Karl, honest discussion requires both sides to acknowledge that they could be wrong. Since you can’t acknowledge that, you are preaching. This is just one example of your many lies.
I’m honest. You can convince me your deity isn’t imaginary with solid and conclusive physical evidence for it. Funny how that doesn’t seem to exist. Philosophy, or rather mental masturbation, won’t do it. Too much smoke, mirrors, hand waving, and misdirection there for it to be honest. Probably a reason philosophy isn’t held in high respect around here, especially Xian apologetics. They are good for a laugh, and little else, except as object lessons in how not to do philosophy.
That’s quite enough. Karl B and empirical1 like to play games with each other on my site? Fine, they get a dungeon cell together.
Banned. For great idiocy.
But just so we know: were they actually two different people or sockpuppets? This “get away from my computer” game has confused me so much, I don’t know which one was more likely…
oh never mind, I saw your dungeon entry.
there is no way for PZ or anyone to actually know; if they were roommates, they’d have the same IP address, too.
I’m still finding sockpuppetry more likely. Either that, or tweedle-atheist isn’t actually an atheist, but a lapsed christian confused about the meanings of words. Because other wise it would make no sense for tweedle-atheist and tweedle-christian to share the same evangelical christian assumptions about language, human interaction, psychology, and history.
Jadehawk,
these are quite valid points. Some things we will never know, we’ll just put them down as one of these mysteries of faith..
I don’t know if empirical1 was really a separate person, but he was clearly no atheist, and he was also clearly not a regular here, making him count as at least two of Karl B’s many, many lies.
Yeah, I kinda baited him about his oh-so embarrassed atheist friends because I had a suspicion that they wouldn’t turn out to be really atheists if they existed at all..
Well, we’re used to theists bringing their imaginary friend along to hold their hand, but IIRC this is the first time one of them has brought an imaginary atheist friend!
What a slimy little turd Karl B turned out to be. As I’m sure most of us do, I know Christians IRL who are very decent people, but we seem almost exclusively to get the dregs here.
Emperic1 = Voices in my head
All theological and religious arguments reduce down to VOICES IN MY HEAD.
Proves nothing. Billions of people hear voices in their heads. The voices all say different things.
There are 42,000 different xian sects, Moslem, Buddhist, Zoroaster, Pagan, Hindu etc.. There are thousands of gods and a continual supply of new religions to replace the ones that die.
Theology/Religion Rule 1: All proofs and arguments reduce down to VOICES IN PEOPLE’S HEADS.
I see Karl B. has been banned.
I lost interest when he lied about not being a fundie while spouting fundie dogma word for word. Chances are everything he said was lies.
The Voices in their Heads crowd have always had problems.
1. They can’t prove anything including whether they really did hear voices in their heads. It’s an unprovable claim.
2. Billions of people hear Voices in their Heads. They all say different things.
3. The only way for theists to decide which Voice in The Head is right, is to fight wars. Xians have killed tens of millions of other xians and nonxians over the centuries on this basis.
Hitchens: Xianity lost its best argument when it stopped burning people at the stake.
That is all they have, Voices in their Heads and violence, sometimes homicidal.
Well, that was…entertaining (?). Damn shame that Karl B’s skull was too thick to actually get anything through to him, despite his pretending to be listening (and getting all huffy about the fact that we didn’t instantly change our collective minds due to his blather). But, anyway, looking back at Karl’s original post:
Oh, how funny it is now. I certainly hope, in all of Karl’s talk about those bad, dishonest, unscientific Christians, that he wasn’t suggesting that he was an exception. Because, Karl B, you turned out to be just as bad as the all the others that we complain about and oppose. Your nice guy act was almost convincing, in that I could assume your first few posts only seemed insulting because you were an inept moron. And yet, after establishing your nice guy persona, you go on to continue the same moronic, insulting, illogical tripe and conjure up an atheist friend straight from your own sphincter. I hope you look back on this and realize, not just that you were a dishonest asshole, but that you were profoundly, unforgivably stupid in both word and deed.
Rest in pieces, twin trolls. Maybe, if it turns that you were indeed two different people using the same IP, you won’t make the mistake of having an extended conversation with one another on someone else’s fucking blog next time.
I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe that they really are a pair of chuckleheads, that Karl B is an overbearing but nice evangelical type and empirical1 is his pet faitheist. They probably live or work together in a strongly Christian area and empirical has learned how to get along without being ostracized.
Thing I found the most hilarious is that Karl B claimed not to be a fundie yet he goes to a Billy Graham church. Billy Graham is a mega-fundie. My parents belong to his specific version of Christianity.
Why do so many of these morons do such a big song and dance about how they want to “have a conversation” and are “here to learn” when all they end up doing is spouting tired talking points and keeping their ears plugged?
If their god really had existed at one time, by now it would have committed suicide out of shame.
The website kittentraining.kittenpets.com is a spam website, and very probably a scam website.
Avoid it!
Spambot is boring. Fuck off.